In the first days of June, I drove cross-country with my eldest son Leo so he’ll have a car for his summer job in Connecticut. The cliché that there’s no better way to see America turns out to be true, particularly for the towns that dot the old Route 66. We had time for audio books – Michael McDonald’s memoir What a Fool Believes, aptly titled and deeply narrated in that inimitable voice, helped while away the miles – as well as important conversations about his new job, apartment, girlfriend, and the newly reported Epstein ties of the music camp he and his brother attended, and where his youngest brother is spending this summer. (Welcome to the Larry Summers club, Interlochen Center for the Arts, which immediately responded to the article with a summer bummer email to parents announcing plans to tear down Epstein’s cabin.) When we finally arrived on the east coast, we’d gained 2,900 miles, an appreciation of gas station cuisine, a check engine light on dashboard, and a verdict from Leo: “no different than traveling by plane… if your flight is delayed 40 hours.”We started in San Diego and drove along the border (wall visible at several points) before heading north in Arizona to catch I-40, which we followed all the way through Tennessee. In New Mexico, well before reaching Albuquerque, we started seeing distance signs for Santa Rosa, easily a dozen of them. We’d never heard of Santa Rosa, NM and looked it up. It’s a town of 2,850 best known for a Route 66 auto museum and a natural spring. So why is the New Mexico Department of Transportation signing Santa Rosa instead of Amarillo, TX, the next real city east of Albuquerque?Turns out we’re not the only people perturbed by this. The cities listed on highway signs are called “control cities” because they control and guide traffic by letting drivers know they’re on the right route. And to be effective, they should be major cities that drivers know. One gentleman named Todd, whose online monicker is “Control City Freak,” has produced hundreds of YouTube videos critiquing the choice of control cities on highway signs for every 1- and 2-digit interstate highway in the continental U.S. Among videos such as Interstate 635: North Dallas Shortie, Interstate 495, The BIG LIE, and a series ranking state DOTs, Santa Rosa makes Todd’s hit list. But NMDOT’s transgression doesn’t hold a candle to Colorado’s obsession with signing Limon, a town of 2,000 between Denver and the Kansas state line. CDOT seems intent on ensuring every Colorado driver knows how to get to this speck of a town, aggravating Control City Freak to no end:270 East Limon? [Horn sounds] Blech… 270 Limon. Why not 270 East Aurora? Aurora has 400,000 people. It’s OK to sign a three-digit interstate for a suburb. It’s alright. You don’t have to go with Limon. Nobody’s going there. Oy.And now we come to one of the stupidest interchanges of all time, E470 South Limon. Nobody is taking I-76 southwest through Colorado in order to go down and pay a toll on 470 and then take 70 all the way back to Limon. There are plenty of regular state highways that would connect you down to Limon that would be faster without going out of your way here. Nobody’s ever taking this. This is maybe the dumbest Limon sign I’ve seen. Which is saying something because they’re all dumb.While millions of teenagers should be on a summer road trip of employment, they might as well be heading to Limon because this summer looks like a lemon. Despite the fact that employers are hiring early, they’re not hiring teens. According to the Wall Street Journal, this summer is shaping up to be the worst teen job market since the federal government started tracking 80 years ago. There were 219,000 fewer teens working in May vs. last year. Summer camp counselor job postings are down nearly 30%. Seasonal hiring in the entertainment and leisure sector (amusement parks, resorts, hotels) is down 70%. And the summer of 2025 was already weak, down 25% from 2024. Whereas finding a summer job used to involve filling in a one-page application and coming in for a brief interview, for many teens it now resembles a full-blown job search: applying to dozens of jobs online, hearing crickets, and parental involvement to make a useful connection.MORE FOR YOUHelp not wantedgettyDoes it really matter? After all, fewer teens are looking for summer jobs. Whereas teen employment in the 1980s routinely topped 50%, since the Great Recession teen summer employment has hovered in the 30s. And the teen unemployment rate – defined as the % of teens who say they’re looking for work and can’t find it – remains in the mid-teens (although creeping up).It sure does. Because losing summer jobs means:1) Missing skillsGood Morning America recently interviewed the founder of a teen career development platform who noted that summer jobs were where teens used to learn “professionalism, communication, and workplace etiquette. Now, employers expect many of those skills before they even hire someone.” Which helps explain why companies complain vociferously about the absence of these skills in entry-level workers.2) Missing work experienceMillions of young Americans now enter their 20s with nothing on their résumés except school and extracurricular activities. And because work experience begets work experience, they’re falling further behind. The timing couldn’t be worse as AI is already transforming good entry-level jobs and elevating the importance of prior work experience.3) Missing motivationAs Lenore Skenazy, founder of Free-Range Kids, recently noted in the New York Post, “a stinky, real-world job can light a fire in kids… A summer job doesn’t have to be great to launch a great life.”4) More pressure on teens to attain office jobsNot many companies want teens around the office for the summer (unless it’s your teen – or if you’re like me, especially if it’s your teen). But when teens can’t find age-appropriate summer jobs, they (and their parents) go to great lengths to convince someone to make space for them in a professional environment. But even a successful outcome here may not involve productive work or building the durable skills companies crave.5) Leading to pessimism about employment prospectsGen Z may be the most pessimistic generation since the Great Depression. Job market optimism among young Americans has fallen a staggering 27% in the past three years – similar to the Great Recession decline between 2007-09. The labor market perception gap between older Americans and Gen Z is the widest in the world.6) And making college the only control city For decades, every sign on the educational highway has pointed toward a single control city: college. And although all roads still lead to college and college is undoubtedly one way to equip aspiring career launchers with the requisite skills for economic mobility, it’s now clear that it’s not the only or even most obvious way. Nevertheless, planners have been signing it like Limon or Santa Rosa. (Leo and I couldn’t resist stopping in Santa Rosa, and it’s not so rosy.)What’s going on? Some reports blame inflation and higher gas prices for squeezing businesses that have historically hired teens for the summer. But the more likely causes are longstanding, namely the growing experience gap and increasing minimum wage:Experience gapWhile many summer jobs really don’t require much experience (e.g., McDonald’s, which claims to remain “committed to being America’s best first job”), they tend to require employees to show up on time and many involve hardware, software, and more complex processes than pouring frozen fries into fryer baskets. The Journalquotes an owner of six restaurants in Texas and Louisiana as saying “it takes at least 45 days to 60 days for somebody to settle in, and by that time they need to get back to school… So I tend to hire older teenagers who can spend a few months with us after having that basic training.” Whether for insurance or other reasons, lifeguard and camp counselor positions are increasingly demanding prior experience. Retail jobs now typically request one year of retail experience or prior experience dealing with customers. Julian Rivera, 17, from Northern New Jersey, told Good Morning America, that “I probably applied to around 20 places before I heard back from anyone. I applied to grocery stores, restaurants, retail stores, pretty much anywhere hiring teens. A lot of places either weren’t hiring anymore, or they wanted someone with experience already.”Minimum wageOne story making headlines in Los Angeles ahead of the World Cup was a last-minute settlement between SoFi Stadium concessionaire Legends Global and the union representing food service workers that reportedly raised the hourly wage for the lowest paid workers to $40. To the union and its members, I say congratulations. But a $40/hr wage means adults crowding out teens and nary a school-age summer server slinging soda at SoFi. While L.A. is an extreme example (minimum wage $18.42), it’s by no means alone. At least 10 other cities mandate a minimum wage over $18. And 10 states are over $15. Meanwhile, none of these cities or states exempt teen summer employment. Which is exactly what was intended 30 years ago when Congress passed the youth training wage, allowing workers under 20 to be paid $4.25 per hour for their first 90 days of work. (If Congress adjusted the training wage for inflation, it would be $9 today.)At $18 or even $15 per hour, many companies don’t see value in hiring inexperienced teens who require extensive training to interact with customers, let alone achieve some measure of productivity. So while higher minimum wages are essential for anyone trying to support a family, they’re not for teens living at home who need summer jobs to start their workforce journeys. Not surprisingly, states with lower minimum wages tend to have higher teen summer employment. The failure of states and cities to follow federal direction on minimum wage exemptions for teen summer jobs is one more example of well-meaning worker protection rules negatively impacting career launch and economic mobility.College apologists may not care about the vanishing summer job. A college-euphoric Wall Street Journal op-ed last week brushed away the phenomenon for “most American teenagers… [as] a rational bet on a future that rewards their time elsewhere,” while acknowledging that for teens from low-income families, “it has been a matter of life and death for decades.”Ironically, summer jobs mattered less a generation ago when there were more of them – when college-for-all looked like it might work. Middle and upper-middle class parents reasonably questioned why their teen should scoop ice cream when she could participate in an enriching summer program and write a college admissions essay about her journey of discovery volunteering in Costa Rica. But college admissions officers have had it up to here with essays about volunteering in Costa Rica (or, really, on any summer enrichment program). So college-bound or not, most teens would be better off working over the summer, gaining experience, skills, and perspective to see the big city beyond Santa Rosa.Because summer jobs for teens matter more than ever, states and cities should be focused on improving the economics of teen hiring with initiatives to narrow the experience gap and establish minimum wage exemptions. (Yes, minimum wage work is better than work below the minimum wage, but that’s letting the best be the enemy of the good, and for most teens, paid work is far better than unpaid work or no work at all.) States should also consider directly funding or providing tax credits for teen summer hiring as well as liability and insurance reforms for teen employment. We need to get started before automation and AI further diminish the pool of available summer jobs. And yet, I’m not aware of any state or city seriously working on this problem. Which makes sense, because all their highway signs still point to one control city.For generations, summer jobs were America’s most successful workforce development strategy. But now they’re melting like the ice cream teens are no longer scooping. If we want the next generation to believe in and succeed in work, we need to give them a chance to do some. So my conclusion from my cross-country road trip: we can’t accept Cruel Summers. I’m calling roadside assistance for Teen Summers and Music Camp Summers. But definitely not for Larry Summers.