This article was published yesterday about the same time that Obama was in the Rose Garden making the situation worse:
Fewer than 3 in 10 American teenagers now hold jobs such as running cash registers, mowing lawns or busing restaurant tables from June to August. The decline has been particularly sharp since 2000, with employment for 16-to-19-year olds falling to the lowest level since World War II. …
The drop in teen employment, steeper than for other age groups, is partly a cultural shift. More youths are spending summer months in school, at music or learning camps or in other activities geared for college. But the decline is especially troubling for teens for whom college may be out of reach, leaving them increasingly idle and with few options to earn wages and job experience.Older workers, immigrants and debt-laden college graduates are taking away lower-skill work as they struggle to find their own jobs in the weak economy. Upper-income white teens are three times as likely to have summer jobs as poor black teens, sometimes capitalizing on their parents’ social networks for help.
Overall, more than 44 percent of teens who want summer jobs don’t get them or work fewer hours than they prefer.
via HeraldNet.com.
Holy Cow!! Three passages worth repeating:
[T]he decline is especially troubling for teens for whom college may be out of reach,
leaving them increasingly idle and with few options to earn wages and job experience.
Just who are these kids who are now left with few options? My guess is urban city kids. In the country there’s always work on the farm. But in the city & suburbs we have thousands and thousands of idle kids. Hanging around with noth’n to do; just look’n for trouble.
Older workers, immigrants and debt-laden college graduates are taking away
lower-skill work as they struggle to find their own jobs in the weak economy.
Isn’t this the truth. Have you ever been to a Wal-Mart where the greeter was under 50? And now everywhere you go, every single stinking fast food place, sit-down restaurant, Target, Wal-Mart, grocery store, and nearly everywhere else has adult immigrants working there. In the ’70s and ’80s these jobs were good (great) jobs for kids to get. Two people I know very well worked at Jewel when they were in high school. One put herself through college; the other bought a Camaro.
With the new (unconstitutional) Obama plan on immigration the job market will now have another few million young people who are eligible to work … but will struggle to find decent employment. It serves no one when you just set people up to fail.
Upper-income white teens are three times as likely to have summer jobs as poor black teens….
This is what I wrote yesterday; inner city kids are going to be one of the biggest losers in the immigration debacle. Contrary to what some people believe, one cannot just walk into a job that pays $100,000 per year. Everyone has to start somewhere. Usually that means that kids bus tables at a local restaurant, caddie, work retail, mow lawns, wash cars, whatever. These jobs are important because they teach critical lessons necessary to move up in the world: show-up on time, look nice, smile, how to deal with conflict, how to deal with a boss, etc. You can’t just wake-up one day and think you’re going to get a job as a banker without having decent people skills.
Obama is dooming generations of inner city kids to lives of and on government sustenance. These kids will never reach their full potential because they have so many factors stacked against them: poor educational systems, uneducated parents, no access to jobs, and a president who’s bargained their futures for political gain.
