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? | 
