Should Your Teen Really Get A Job This Summer?

Get Schooled
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read

Finding work as a teenager can be tough. One’s teenage years are “first ever job” territory, and it’s a confusing process for young people trying to figure out how to communicate that they would make a capable, reliable employee to potential employers without a work history to refer them to.

It’s also harder than ever to say whether spending summer break working is really worthwhile in light of rising college tuition costs. A $10 per hour job cashiering or washing dishes won’t do much to tackle tuition bills that can reach up to $50,000 a year. As NPR’s education blogger Anya Kamenetz writes, “A student would have to work 37 hours a week, every week of the year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, to [cover the average costs of public college tuition]. Research shows that when college students work more than 20 hours a week, their studies suffer.”

Going to class and earning good grades in college is frequently regarded as a full-time job in itself. Add in the burden of an actual full-time job on top of that, and it’s easy to imagine even the most industrious student suffering from over-work and time constraints.

These concerns may be reflected in the consistently dwindling numbers of teens in the workforce nationwide. Just 35% of teens held a job last summer. That number has been decreasing since 1978, when 70% of all teenagers were part of the workforce.

Contrary to national statistics, 73% of Get Schooled students reported that they’re looking for a job or currently have one.

Instead of spending their summer working, many students are instead choosing to use their time off to study for the SAT/ACT, take summer classes, and prepare for college applications. The idea being that focusing on academics will pay off later in college acceptance letters and generous financial aid.

Get Schooled students tended to see clear upsides to both ways of spending summer break. “I’m going to work all summer long, but only part-time to cover day-to-day costs. I’ll be focusing more on taking summer classes at a community college,” Get Schooled student Osman B. said.

Even if it won’t pay for their college, students see the summer job as valuable both for the wage, and how it looks on a college application. Work experience is viewed by college admissions offices in a similar way as a passionately pursued extracurricular activity. Summer jobs help develop soft skills like time-management, and work ethic, and studies have shown that working a summer job also boosts academic performance in the classroom.

So, is the summer job still worthwhile? Certainly not like it used to be for students looking at today’s college tuition prices. But for many, the certainty of a wage is better than nothing when the financial aid process can feel like a lottery, and taking out loans is necessary for many students to even think about paying for college.

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