This is a pretty tough summer for young job-seekers. Outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas predicts this will be the worst summer for teen hiring in the nearly 80 years that BLS has been gathering the data. The unemployment rate among 16-to-19-year-olds has been ticking up steadily in recent years— from 10.3% in May 2023, to 14.7% in May 2026. Meanwhile, there’s been another change with teen participation in the labor market over many decades — fewer of them have been working or looking for work. In the 1980s, about two out of three teenagers had paid work in the summer, according to BLS’s data on labor force participation, which is not seasonally adjusted. In recent years, that’s down to around one in three. The long-running decline in teen employment has consequences for young people, their parents, and U.S. employers.I met Nick Burka at Coney Island Beach on a windy Saturday in early summer. He’s 31, and said that growing up on New York’s Upper East Side he had one job. “I babysat my upstairs neighbor — just once,” he said. “It was kind of a disaster. This kid was really intense and a little scary. I didn’t get paid and I just never went back.” In fact, like many in recent generations, Burka never got a paying job as a teen. He didn’t feel like he had to. “I had an allowance,” he said. “My parents gave me money.”In college at Vassar, he worked as a computer-science tutor and research assistant. Today he runs a small tech nonprofit that works on disability benefit access. But he feels like he missed something growing up. “I think all the people I know who worked seem more responsible than me,” Burka said. So what’s driven the decline in work among teens? “This is a decision of labor supply,” said economist Hilary Wething at the Economic Policy Institute. “Fewer teens are looking to participate in the workforce. For 18- and 19-year-olds, the share enrolled in high school or college grew from about 45% in 1984 to 63% in 2025. That’s a pretty big jump. They just have more competing priorities than previous generations: extracurriculars, college prep, academic programs, internships.” For middle- and upper-middle-class parents, these options may make more financial sense than pushing their kid to get a minimum-wage summer job, especially if it helps them get into a better college or land a scholarship.That’s the case for Paul Rades of Silver Spring, Maryland, whose 16-year-old daughter, a rising high school senior, will be babysitting and mowing lawns for pocket money this summer. Most of her time, though, will be spent in non-money-earning activities: practicing for varsity sports and doing unpaid internships at a public defender’s office and a refugee assistance organization.“I have no objection. I encourage her to work, for the soft-skill and people-skill development, as well as just having the spare cash,” Rades said.That sentiment comes from his own experience growing up. He had to work from his early teens, picking strawberries, stocking shelves, and delivering pizza.“I was raised by parents who had a very strong work ethic. I had to make my way in the world. I had to pay for everything,” Rades said. But he said the reality is quite different for his daughter. “She is a very driven young woman, she has a heavy academic load, she’s very competitive in sports, does extracurricular and volunteer work. I don’t want her to be stressed out working 40 hours a week, because I don’t think that’s healthy for a child,” Rades said. “How is she going to hold down a job at Dick’s Sporting Goods? There isn’t time in a 24-hour daily cycle for her to add more work.” Tonee Harris, 19, of Indianapolis has managed to land not one, but two jobs this summer, with paid work and a paid internship. She’ll be a college sophomore at Butler University in the fall. She earned $18 an hour in late spring working at her grandmother’s daycare centers, and now she’s interning in a chemistry lab at Eli Lilly. “It pays $26 an hour, which is huge for me,” Harris said. “I’m going to use this money for a down payment on a home. I’m looking forward to purchasing a home after I finish my bachelor’s degree.” Throughout high school, Harris worked for pay at the daycare centers, while also attending STEM camps and volunteering at Planned Parenthood and the Indiana Science Fair, helping to build her resume and land scholarships to attend college. Meanwhile, Wething said, for less-advantaged, lower-income teens, a lot of summer employment opportunities have dried up in recent decades. That’s ever since a primary source of federal funding, the Summer Youth Employment Program, was weakened and converted to block grants to cities and states in the late 1990s.“Students for which maybe college is not possible, they benefited the most from something like a federal jobs program in their area,” said Wething. “Now that doesn’t exist in certain parts.” There’s also been a decline in demand for teen workers, said Peter Cappelli, a management professor at The Wharton School and director of the school’s Center for Human Resources.“Employers are just not as willing to take on new people, even in the summer,” he said.And the types of jobs Cappelli did as a young adult just starting out in the workforce are no longer available.“Factory jobs you could do without much of any practice or skill, jobs that are entry-level, particularly for manual work, like pushing a broom in a shop—those jobs are just gone,” Cappelli said. In addition, employers can now use staffing agencies to find temps and seasonal workers without tapping the teen market. “All things being equal, you’d rather hire a somewhat older person,” said Carl Van Horn, director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. “There’s queasiness or concern on the part of some employers about hiring young people. There may be insurance issues, or perceptions about what young people are like, which may or may not be fair.”Perceptions such as: They’re always on their phones, or that they don’t show up to work on time, or at all. Manny Rodriguez has a front-row seat for all this. He’s the founder of Revolution Workshop, a nonprofit on Chicago’s South and West Sides that promotes skills training for young people in manufacturing and the trades.Rodriguez said that for years, he’s watched kids become less engaged with sports, with employment opportunities — with anything that has them leaving the house and their screens. All this makes Revolution Workshop’s job harder, he said. “It is a problem when we’re getting them right out of high school, trying to make them job-ready. Teaching them good work habits, what it is to hustle and communicate and how to take constructive criticism,” Rodriguez said. “And I would tell you with the trades — it’s attendance. Just getting people to come on-site and stay off their phones.” The decline in teen work is particularly damaging for the demographic groups Revolution Workshop is trying to serve. “Having fewer job opportunities is especially difficult for lower-income individuals,” said Rutgers’ Carl Van Horn. “They’re stigmatized, they don’t have the connections, they don’t have the money. That disadvantages them.” That means finding entry-level jobs, then move-up jobs, and eventually embarking on a career path, will likely start more slowly and take longer, reducing these workers’ future earnings and retirement savings.