Summer jobs were once a rite of passage for American teenagers. At the turn of the 21st century, a majority of American teenagers worked during the summer.
This summer, only about 1 out of 3 teenagers will be employed — a decline that amounts to 3.3 million fewer working teenagers than at the turn of the century.
That’s bad for America’s workforce — and worse for millions of teenagers missing out on the benefits of work.
While the paychecks teenagers earn can fill gas tanks, fund entertainment, and grow savings accounts, those jobs are more than just paychecks. Jobs for teenagers provide experience and life lessons that teach youth the importance of key skills such as showing up on time, treating customers and coworkers with respect, staying on task even when tasks are difficult or boring, and engaging with other humans face-to-face.
For many young people, a first job is also their first experience of responsibility outside of home and school. It builds independence and confidence. It exposes teenagers to people from different backgrounds and teaches them how to navigate expectations, conflict, and responsibility. Those lessons can’t be learned through video games, social media, summer classes, or another season of travel sports.
Part of the decline in teenage employment is cultural. There are more ways for teenagers to occupy summer hours in 2026 than in 2000, many of which are unproductive.
In 2000, the smartphone didn’t exist, and just half of U.S. households had the internet. By 2021, according to Common Sense Media, teenagers aged 13 to 18 averaged 8 hours and 39 minutes a day of entertainment screen use — a two-hour increase from 2015.
It’s not just the availability of more on-demand entertainment that’s kept teenagers out of work. A generation ago, they spent summers earning paychecks. Today, many spend them scrolling screens, building educational transcripts, or shuttling between organized activities.
Culture is only part of the story. Public policy has also played a role, including pricing many teenagers out of the labor market.
Decades of research show that minimum wages are particularly detrimental to teenage employment. Just before the Great Recession hit, federal lawmakers enacted a big minimum wage increase, raising it from $5.15 in 2007 to $7.25 in 2009. That’s the equivalent, in inflation-adjusted dollars, of moving from about $7.90 to $11 today.
That was followed by a cascade of state minimum wage hikes. In 2009, only 15 states plus the District of Columbia had minimum wages above the federal minimum — and the differences were relatively small. By 2016, 29 states had minimum wages above the federal minimum, and today, 16 states plus the District of Columbia have minimum wages that are more than double the federal minimum.
The COVID-era surge in federal spending fueled inflation and drove up wages because employers had to compete with $1,000-per-week unemployment checks. While that rendered some minimum wages irrelevant because the market demanded more, many cities and states now have minimum wages that are almost certainly pricing teenagers out of the workforce.
That includes Hawaii, Rhode Island, California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington state, all with a minimum wage of $16 or more. And on July 1, the District of Columbia’s minimum wage will rise to $18.40 per hour while San Francisco’s will increase to $19.61 per hour — the equivalent of $41,000 per year.
Even after adjusting for inflation, those wages are more than twice the 2007 minimum wage, and the latter two are not far off from the $21.05 median wage of preschool and kindergarten teachers across the United States.
Employers know teenagers typically require more training and are less productive than seasoned workers. When minimum wage hikes prevent employers from accounting for teenagers’ higher costs and lower productivity by paying them less, employers won’t hire teenagers.
In the summer of 2007, 7.2 million teenagers had jobs. Just four years later, in 2011, only 5.2 million teenagers were working — a loss of 2 million teenage jobs. For seven straight years, from 2008 to 2014, teenagers’ summer unemployment rate exceeded 20%.
The lack of available jobs caused many teenagers to give up on working, creating a new norm of nonemployment. Whereas 2 out of 3 teenagers wanted summer jobs in 2000, only 1 out of 2 seek summer jobs today.
This is a problem because research shows that part-time teenage employment is associated with higher future wages, occupational status, and more consistent employment.
At the same time that millions fewer young people are gaining work experience, America’s aging demographics and deteriorating fiscal outlook will require younger generations to produce more and pay more in taxes than any generation before them.
RESTORING AMERICA: THE ABANDONED GOAL OF REVENUE NEUTRALITY
First jobs teach young people that they are capable, needed, and accountable to others. America will miss more than paychecks for teenagers if that experience disappears.
While policymakers can’t create summer jobs or force teenagers to take them, they can stop pricing them out of the labor market. And parents, schools, and communities should once again recognize that a summer job is not a distraction from success but a building block for it.
Rachel Greszler is a senior research fellow at the Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise at Advancing American Freedom Foundation.