Teens Struggle to Get Foot in Door

Teen unemployment is rising as young job seekers face heightened competition from older workers and immigrants who are taking entry-level positions.

Teenagers also are disadvantaged by a tighter job market in which employers are less willing to hire workers with little or no job experience. Some experts fear that these and other shifts in the job market could persist and hurt future prospects for many youths.

“The work experience that is so necessary to have when you’re 17, 18 years old, they’re just not getting it,” said Paul Harrington, an economist at Northeastern University who just finished a study examining the employment patterns of Los Angeles teenagers.

Last year, 36% of those ages 16 to 19 held some sort of job, be it a paper route or a full-time position in lieu of high school or college. That is down from 45% in 2000 and is the lowest level since 1947.

Granted, some teenagers may opt not to work, choosing instead to study and hit up their parents for pocket money. But a growing percentage of teens who do want to work are having a tougher time finding jobs. Teenage unemployment in Los Angeles was 26.2% in 2004, twice what it was just four years ago. Nationwide, teen unemployment in 2004 hit 16.8%.

Brandi Walker, for instance, has been sending out applications since last August but has yet to find work.

The 16-year-old junior at Jordan High School in Watts needs a job, either for after school or for the summer. She wants to start saving for college, where she hopes to study to become a pediatrician.

“I’m looking for anything right now,” she said.

Teenagers always have had difficulty finding work after an economic downturn like the one that followed the dot-com boom, but economists say that although the job market is recovering for adults, it has stagnated for youths.

At stake is more than just a summer paycheck or extra lunch money. First jobs -- whether answering telephones or flipping burgers -- impart vital skills and discipline that will help later in life.

Whether teens work may be a good predictor of how successful they will be as adults. Teens who do not work are more likely to drop out of school, fail to graduate from college and earn less money over their lifetime, Harrington and others who study youth employment trends said.

The problem is particularly acute for teens from poor families.

“They’re having serious problems,” said Richard W. Judy, an economist and chief executive of Workforce Associates Inc., a consulting firm. “They can’t find a job because they don’t have the attributes that employers are looking for -- the skills, the appearance, perhaps the attitudes.”

Add to that more competition from better qualified workers. Teens are being crowded out of jobs by older workers and immigrants of all ages, who are willing to take menial jobs that once were the province of teens. Employers generally see both groups as more reliable than teenagers.

“Those who don’t have education, and those who don’t have the skills for the workforce, are either being forced out or not being let in,” said David Crippens, chairman of the youth council of Los Angeles’ federally funded workforce investment board.

The percentage of adults over age 55 in the workforce has risen since 2001. Some older workers are choosing to work longer to stay occupied, but surveys show that the majority keep laboring because they have not saved enough for retirement.

“The competition is not just other youths right now, it’s the older population who’s been laid off and is willing to take these jobs because they’re willing to do it with less pay,” said Sharifa Austin, a counselor who tries to connect teens to jobs for the city’s Community Development Department.

She recalled a recent trip to a movie theater during which a gray-haired usher took her ticket. “What adult in the past could you think of who actually would work at a theater?”

Employers attest to the desirability of older workers. Walgreen Co., the national drugstore chain that is expanding in Southern California, has formed a partnership with the AARP to recruit more elderly employees.

Walgreen spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said that the company’s rapid growth left room to hire teenagers as well, and that it was not dropping the number of teens it employed to make way for older workers. But older workers are a particularly good catch.

“They’re incredibly loyal and serve as good role models for our younger workers,” Bruce said, “and I think they bring a level of maturity to the role.”

Immigrants may have also gained at the expense of teenagers because some employers may prefer immigrants. Harrington, the economist, says businesses he speaks to talk about immigrants’ strong work ethic and prior experience in their native countries.

There are also subtle shifts in the way the current generation of teens is viewed by employers, as well as in how youths themselves view work, some observers say.

Bruce Tulgan, founder of RainmakerThinking Inc., which counsels businesses on youth work issues, says employers’ current emphasis on increased productivity from their workforce leaves little “room for downtime, room for inefficiency, room for a learning curve.”

In turn, Tulgan said, today’s teens have been raised in a world of downsizing, outsourcing and incessant change, and are more skeptical about the benefits of stable employment.

“Fifty years ago, a 16-year-old teen worked in a movie theater for the summer and thought, ‘Someday I might run this place,’ ” Tulgan said. “Now, a 16-year-old looks around and thinks, ‘This place may not even exist in two years.’ ”

Tulgan and other economists and counselors caution against the stereotype that this means teens inherently lack the work ethic of their baby boom parents.

Judy, the 73-year-old CEO of Workforce Associates, noted that grumbling over the poor work ethic of youths was a long-lived tradition. He laughed as he recalled complaints of laziness and irresponsibility that his generation made about young baby boomers decades ago.

Nonetheless, employers across the board are raising their standards and cutting positions once set aside to give young workers a foot in the door.

“We’re seeing fewer numbers of job orders coming in at that entry-level position,” said Robert Sainz, assistant general manager of the city’s Community Development Department, who oversees a program to help teens find work.

Sainz said that federal funds for programs like his had been cut by $250 million nationwide, and that his own program was scrambling to find other sources of funding while trimming services.

An additional problem in Los Angeles is the city’s sprawling geography. Youths from some lower-income families in Los Angeles live in communities without many businesses and with inadequate public transportation.

“A lot of us are 18 and still don’t have our own cars,” said Eleana Flores of Boyle Heights, who is pinning her hopes on a position at a downtown Starbucks coffee shop. “If you find a good job [far away] it’s pretty hard on us.”

Community development officials point out that much of the city’s growing retail and food businesses that might be likely to hire teens are on the Westside or in the San Fernando Valley. The agency has struck a deal with Magic Mountain, for example, to bus teenage workers from the central city to its park in Valencia.

But the flight of major corporations from Los Angeles also has hurt the ability to place teens in steady jobs, said John Rak of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which runs teen centers in South Los Angeles and on the Eastside.

He said that when local banks or auto parts stores are bought by out-of-state companies, they cut local teen job programs.

“When the corporate headquarters moves to Chicago or New York, it gets harder,” Rak said.

In many Los Angeles neighborhoods, those large companies have been replaced by an array of small businesses that are less likely to hire young workers. If they do need extra help, those family-owned shops or firms would more likely turn elsewhere.

“If anyone is working in those businesses it would be family members,” said Crippens of the workforce investment board. “And there is just not the great need as there once was for extra hands. This region has never faced this kind of challenge, because we’ve always been a place where jobs have come up, where there was always something just beyond the horizon.”

Crippens, who is also on the board of his church at 24th Street and Central Avenue, says he sees the challenge facing youths every day when he drives there and spots teenagers loitering on the streets.

“That’s where it just becomes vivid,” he said.