Job Market For Teenagers Not Precisely Booming In Summer time 2024
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In case you take note of the job tendencies for American teenagers and hearken to Nationwide Public Radio’s Market, you is likely to be in for a little bit of a shock. In keeping with this authoritative supply, teen summer time employment is “nonetheless booming“.
By that, they imply the proportion of the teenager inhabitants Age 16-19 that’s both working or on the lookout for a job is on a rising pattern and has reached a comparatively excessive stage after having fallen for many years.
There’s only one downside. To make that declare, they’re together with teenagers who aren’t truly employed of their measure. They’re counting unemployed teenagers who do not have jobs as in the event that they do.
Here is the precise declare:
In June, 37.4% of 16-to-19-year-olds had been both working or on the lookout for a job, based on the most recent jobs report. That is simply shy of a 15-year excessive of 38% again in March.
Here is the issue. If you title an article with a headline like “Teen summer time employment continues to be booming“, the readers of that article are going to moderately count on that you simply’re reporting on the variety of teenagers who’re employed. In case you’re together with the proportion of teenagers who wouldn’t have jobs however are on the lookout for work within the figures you might be reporting, you are not likely describing how profitable teenagers are at getting jobs.
What you are actually describing is the scale of the teenager labor drive. By definition, the teenager labor drive consists of each the variety of teenagers who’ve a job and the variety of unemployed teenagers who don’t however try to get one. And should you do this, what you are not describing is how profitable teenagers have been in getting employed.
What does the employment scenario for teenagers appear like while you solely have a look at those who even have jobs? Here is the newest replace to our charts monitoring the employment of working age U.S. youngsters (Age 16-19) within the U.S. from January 2016 by way of June 2024. The highest chart reveals the seasonally adjusted employment numbers for your complete Age 16-19 inhabitants and likewise the demographic subgroups of youthful working teenagers Age 16-17 and older working teenagers (Age 18-19). The underside chart reveals the employment-to-population share for every of those demographic teams:
After we do this, we discover nothing particular about 2024’s summer time teen employment scenario. The seasonally-adjusted knowledge reveals the mixed whole of Age 16-19 teenagers with jobs declined a small quantity from Might 2024’s stage. The subgroup knowledge signifies that reported decline got here primarily amongst older teenagers (Age 18-19), because the variety of youthful teenagers (Age 16-17) with jobs elevated over the earlier month.
The higher chart reveals the rising for teen employment have been rising throughout many of the post-pandemic recession period, however the subsequent chart displaying the seasonally adjusted U.S. teen employment to inhabitants ratio reveals teen employment is not actually booming in any respect.
As an alternative, it reveals the proportion of the U.S. working age teen inhabitants who’ve efficiently obtained jobs peaked between December 2022 and April 2023 relying on the actual age group. June 2024’s knowledge for every of the teams we monitor is under these peaks. This chart confirms the precise teen employment increase, such because it was, peaked in late 2022 and early 2023. If summer time teen jobs had been “nonetheless booming”, we might see a rising pattern in 2024 on this seasonally-adjusted knowledge, significantly in the course of the summer time months.
It isn’t a nasty job marketplace for teenagers. It is simply not a “nonetheless booming” one. It hasn’t been for over a yr. Maybe that can change as we get additional into Summer time 2024, however proper now, the info is saying in any other case.
In regards to the Seasonally-Adjusted Knowledge
Every of the info collection introduced in these charts receives its personal seasonal adjustment. Due to that, the numbers of working teenagers Age 16-17 and Age 18-19 will not essentially add as much as the totals proven for the mixed Age 16-19 inhabitants. In case you’re on the lookout for employment figures that do add up, you may need to evaluate non-seasonally-adjusted knowledge.
References
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Drive Statistics (Present Inhabitants Survey – CPS). [Online Database]. Accessed: 3 Might 2024.
Editor’s Word: The abstract bullets for this text had been chosen by Searching for Alpha editors.
