Last Hired, First Fired

By Charlotte O'Dair-Gadler, age 14

I'm really grateful that I was invited to write for Patch. I've been pretty lucky. Besides the fun of the job and the advantages it may give me in the future, it has become so much harder to find a job this summer. In this economy, it's not only adults who find it tough. Teenagers looking for meaningful work - or any kind of work - for pay have been left out.

This is true in the Montclair community as it is across the nation. Last summer, Amelia Dunnell, 15, who will be a Montclair High School sophomore in September, worked as a junior counselor at Park Street Academy. This year, she went back to Park Street, only to find they had cut the job she'd had. Next, she and a friend tried the Jewish Community Center of Clifton, which was only hiring employees that would work for the whole summer. They came back empty-handed. Though they finally found aide jobs at a daycare camp at Ner Tamid Temple in Bloomfield, the long job-hunting process was jarring. "It's a lot harder because people are looking for more qualified people [than most teens] to work for less pay," Amelia told me.

We're one of the hardest-hit groups in the current labor crisis. Today, about 2.4 million of us are unemployed. Just 10 years ago, more than half of the national teen population had some kind of summer job. In contrast, only one in four teens work for pay today.

Why are we, along with the elderly, the largest group to get stuck without jobs? It seems that many places where we traditionally look for work - mall stores and camps, for instance - simply aren't hiring. Even if they were, we get passed over because it's assumed that we're merely temporary and that after a few weeks we'll quit to go back to high school or leave for college. We are often the "last hired, first fired."

Personally, I expect to learn a lot about responsibility and focus at Patch—not to mention a valuable skill. With some kind of work, we earn experience along with college funds or spending money. It prepares us for the "outside" world. Summer work helps us understand the process of earning and saving money, interviewing, and dealing with all the challenges that come with a steady job.

Besides the pay, the structure and even the fun jobs provide, summer employment has other, less obvious advantages. Without summer jobs, many teens will go to college or straight to work without any prior experience. A part-time job can help teens gain college entrance. If that's not enough incentive, for every year we work, our income level in our 20s rises from 14 percent to 16 percent, according to New York's Summer Youth Employment Program. Teenagers with work experience have a higher graduation rate than those who don't. Employed teens are much less likely to become pregnant or to commit crimes.

The lack of opportunity for summer work is a situation our generation can't afford. When 14-18-year-olds are excluded from the labor market, the chance to grab these opportunities shrinks.

Another one of my friends searched and searched for a summer job in the spring, but it just seemed like no one was willing to hire a 14-year-old. Instead, she decided to volunteer at the Red Cross, as well as babysit over the summer. Volunteering and doing small jobs for money around the neighborhood such as babysitting or cleaning houses might temporarily replace a legitimate summer job. But casual jobs like babysitting are hard to find too because people aren't going out as much these days. Though volunteer work subtracts a paycheck from the equation, it can help ready teens for jobs in the future.

One bright note: the federal government seems to be paying attention. Almost two months ago, a bill, which would allot $1 billion to  create 350,000 jobs for teens, was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. It's a start, but I think that Montclair should take the initiative and start its own jobs program for youth.

The Montclair Board of Education's Web site does not appear to offer summer job help for high school students. The most recent summer job listings for teenagers that are posted on Baristanet, our community blog, are dated from April 2009. Actually, I couldn't find any current online resources for finding summer jobs for Montclair High School teens.

Working teens are too important a resource to be lost or overlooked. With all the benefits of having a summer job, why shouldn't the town give teens a helping hand?