The graph above was sampled from a Washington Post editorial. I find it difficult to relate their thesis, that young Americans are eager to work, to that graph. Perhaps what they meant to say is that young Americans are more eager to work now than they were a few years ago. College enrollments are down, too, so that doesn’t explain what’s going on, either.
Things are certainly different from when I was a kid. I have filed a 1040 every year since I was 14.
Update
After looking at that graph again, it’s clear that graduating from high school used to be synonymous with working for 40-50% of the population and that was very consistent over a long period. That changed in the 1990s, coincident with the push for higher education. Whether that was cause, effect, or both I have no idea.
Employment increased throughout the 90s. What happened in the 2000s? I think the push for higher education has been around well before the 90s.
Steve
As I said in the post, it’s multi-factorial. Other factors included increased immigration from Mexico, an unintended consequence of the immigration reform of the 1980s, China establishing a de facto peg to the dollar, the Clinton era tax reforms, Internet + Windows 95 which led to Indian call centers, end of the .com boom, China obtaining most favored nation trading status, etc.
The ages 16 – 19 basket is a pretty tough one because roughly half of them are in high school, so there are going to be high school and non-high school related reasons. High school graduation rates appear to have been 58.6% in 1951 and 69.5% in 1961. In 2019, the graduation rate is reported is 85.3%.
I think teens these days find it tougher to get jobs. I think states place more restrictions on the jobs and the hours a teen can take. Employers have their own minimums, so they have their own preferences. Teens with cars will work the gig economy and insist that they don’t have to pay taxes if they don’t get a W-2, etc. My son’s summer jobs this year and last had a cap on his hours, and he would say that he was underemployed because he wanted more hours than they would give him.
I certainly didnt put in a 1040 until I was 16 and officially worked on the books. Everything earned on paper routes, on the farm, construction was off the books and I never really thought about it. Certainly no one talked about it.
Think kids have more homework now than we used to have so may be more difficult to work.
Steve
Yeah, that age is complicated.
– As more kids choose college, fewer will be working those years. Also, colleges don’t seem to value work experience much, so kids (and their parents) who want to be competitive for college will do extracurriculars.
– In my youth, the goal of most teens was to get a car, because a car meant freedom. Kids usually needed a job to get that car, put gas in it, etc. Today, that is not the culture anymore.
– Parents are having fewer children and they are having them later, so they are likely able to pay for more amenities for their kids. So, why would kids want to work when they don’t need to?
In my own case, my daughter got a summer job. She’s now back east at school and not working in her sophomore year. Next summer she will try to get an internship which are increasingly unpaid.
My son, by contrast, started college locally here this fall as a freshman. But he still has his high-school job at McDonalds and lives at home. Besides paying for his own gas, insurance, etc. he does not spend money. He bought himself a new Xbox and that’s about it. So he’s saving a ton of money. He doesn’t drive much – he gets together with his friends occasionally, but most of the time he hangs out with them online playing video games.
I graduated from high school (and started college) when I was 17. In my summer job the next summer (when I was 18) I worked in a steel mill.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, while I attended college I put in 30-40 hours a week working as well.
I strongly suspect that the graph says more about the “first fired” or low skilled worker, and recessions, than anything else.
steve observes that employment grew in the 90’s. But only measured off of the 1991-1992 recession trough. The late 90’s were most likely a wealth effect due to dot com. The Gen Z trend, in purple, probably only reflects another recovery after the Great Recession.
Hard to imagine that overlaying this overall downward trend since the mid to late 70’s is not immigration and the push for college education.
What you have is a jagged pattern with employment rising and falling often associated with recessions. Something happened in the 2000s that once it dropped kept it from coming back like it had before.
Steve
Probably immigration and the college push.
It could be simpler: laziness.
Chinese most favored nation trading status