5 Ways a Summer Job Can Prepare Teens for a Life of Success

“The patients who followed me flourished,” she says. Fortune, adding that it was particularly beneficial for those who were depressed. “They now had something to do outside of bed, and it made them feel like they had a purpose. Plus, they loved the pay. I saw that this was a very, very good thing for their mental health, as well as for their future stability.

While this advice may seem obvious to Baby Boomer or Gen X parents who bought ice cream or worked retail jobs in high school as a rite of passage, it bears repeating for today's teens today, who are less likely to get a summer job than before. a generation or two ago, due to a mix of automated or outsourced jobs, as well as an increase in college-focused summer courses. In the summer of 1978, for example, nearly 60 percent of teenagers were working or looking for work; that percentage has generally been declining since then, seeing a sharp decline after 2000, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2017, only 35% of adolescents were working or looking for work.

But since the pandemic, those numbers have been slowly increasing: In 2021, 36.6% of teens were employed for at least part of the summer, according to a Pew Research analysis — and, according to the May 2024 jobs report, 38% of teens were employed for at least part of the summer. 16- to 19-year-olds were either employed or looking for work.

“To my delight, the job market for teens has gotten stronger and stronger,” Alicia Sasser Modestino, research director at the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University, told Fortune. “It’s all about supply and demand, because we came out of COVID and were in the economics of ‘take this job and shove it’ … Employers rediscovered teens as a source of labor because they were desperate.”

And that's a very good thing, according to experts. Here's why.

Self-esteem in adolescents

“I really like summer jobs for teens for a number of reasons,” Barbara Greenberg, a Connecticut-based adolescent psychologist, tells Fortune. Including, she says, “It's wonderful for self-esteem.”

The reason it's such an ego boost, she explains, is that “first, you're needed, because they need you.” You wake up and know you are needed somewhere. Plus, you get reimbursed for your work.

Because of these factors, she sometimes finds that “children like their work better than school, because they feel very useful in their work.”

Plus, Ballinger says, “It puts them in the presence of responsible peers…and gets them out of the bubble where mom and dad protect them.” They have to do things on their own and impress a boss who may not give them a break, so they can learn how to solve problems.

Future career

“It really helps their future careers, too,” says Ballinger, who likes to use her daughter as an example: She worked at Chick-fil-A during her last two years of high school, and when she went to college, her food-industry experience helped her land one of the highest-paying jobs in campus cafeterias. This led her to be connected with the university's human resources director, who hired her as an assistant. “Now she's in law school and had to get a summer internship – and while most first-year law students work for free, looking for an entry-level degree, she landed a high-paying summer law job with superior experience in an HR firm,” because of this college experience.

“She hadn't planned on working in human resources, but she loves it now, and this high school job opened doors for her later in her career, which I also saw with patients,” says- She. “It can open doors you can’t even imagine.”

These results are consistent with those of an earlier study, which examined employment history data for more than 256,000 young Canadians. It found that adolescents who work part-time jobs progress toward careers better suited to their needs because early exposure to work helped them refine their preferences, improve their soft skills, gain better references and learn how to search for a job more successfully.

Plus, Sasser Modestino says, working helps young people learn about jobs they like and don't like. Her children, for example, worked one summer in a pasta factory. “It’s hard work: you stand all day, wearing a hairnet.” School suddenly seemed a lot more fun. “It’s a great source of motivation,” she says. “Just having that experience on the field, you learn a lot about where you want to end up in life and what it takes to get there.” »

Budgeting

Earning their own money can help young people learn basic lessons about how much things cost and how to budget for them. “Suddenly $40 or $60 for a top, they start to understand,” Greenberg says. “It teaches them the meaning of money.”

In fact, a 2023 OppLoans survey of 1,000 young people aged 14 to 24 found that simply landing a job already helped them understand how to budget. Of those who responded, 63% had a job lined up for the summer and planned to earn an average of $4,037 by September and save 57% ($2,301), mostly for living expenses ( 25%) and tuition fees (20%). , travel (18%), expenses (17%), family support (16%) and 4% “other” reasons.

“Getting your first paycheck is an incredible learning curve, not only in terms of the paperwork required to get hired, but also in terms of managing your money,” says Sasser Modestino. “They learn when taxes are taken out and how to cash the check. It’s often the first time they open a bank account and learn about direct deposit and how to save.”

Academic results

According to a study carried out in 2023 by Sasser Modestino, young people hired at the end of school could have better academic results once classes resume. The study examined the educational outcomes of teens from low-income neighborhoods who won one of 10,000 Boston Summer Youth Employment Program lottery spots to match with summer work – typically at municipal agencies, nonprofit organizations, camps and parks – and found that those students who obtained jobs through the program were 7% more likely to graduate high school on time and 22% less likely to drop out of high school within four years of participating in the program compared to a control group (students who had no employment opportunities). There was also a slight advantage (of 6.8%) in grade point averages for those who held the jobs.

And although it was structured, career-focused jobs that seemed likely to benefit the most in terms of adult mentors and practical lessons, “working is better than not working,” she says. “So even under the Summer Youth Employment Program, we have entry level, camp counselor type jobs, but those are the jobs you have to have first to learn how to show up on time and work as a team.

Its findings correlate with those of an earlier similar study of New York's summer youth employment program and its effects on more than 200,000 participants. Stanford University lead researcher Jacob Leos-Urbel noted that participation in the program had a “positive, albeit small, effect” on taking and passing standardized tests administered by New York State for measure academic progress in high school. Additionally, he noted, “Our research has shown that a summer youth employment program also has positive and significant effects on academic outcomes. »

Social-emotional skills

By getting a taste of work, Greenberg says, “kids learn a lot of skills: They learn responsibility, they learn how to work in a team, how to work with a boss, how to deal with different types of employees.” And it can teach you how to be with people of all ages.

All of this is particularly important as we emerge from the pandemic. “A lot of kids were undersocialized because they had spent all those months in isolation, so there's some catching up to do when it comes to social-emotional skills,” like practicing empathy, learning to problem-solve , communicate, and make decisions, all of which are necessary to connect with others, she says.

According to Ballinger, many teenagers had difficulty talking to people before finding a job, whether in person or on the phone. “If they couldn’t text, it made them very anxious,” she said. “So to get the job they had to practice talking to new people, being polite, even being polite to difficult people. »

And then there’s the important lesson of showing up on time — something Sasser Modestino says most kids mention learning when giving feedback on youth employment programs. “They say they’re learning, ‘If you’re five minutes late, don’t show up at all,’” she says. “That’s not something you learn in high school … But if you’re late to a job three times, you’re fired.”

Learn more about parenting: