Teens Children and Money - Teen Employment

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that in June 2004 8.1 million people ages sixteen to nineteen, or about half of the population that age (50.2%), were employed or looking for work (The Employment Situation: June 2004). The unemployment rate in this age group was 19.9%. Employment rates among the young are highest during the summer months, when many full-time students are out of school. However, a January 2003 BLS press release ("Employment Experience of Youths during the School Year and Summer") noted that "most teenage students who worked during the summer also worked during the school year."

The rate of teens in the labor force was correlated with family income; as a household's income rises, the likelihood that a teen within the household will work also rises. In March 2002 only 17% of teens ages fifteen to seventeen from families with a household income of less than $15,000 were in the labor force, compared with 28% of teens from families with a household income of more than $50,000. (See Figure 4.5.)

The Jobs Teens Hold

According to the January 2003 BLS press release, the top occupations for youths employed during the 1999–2000 school year varied by age and gender. For boys ages sixteen to eighteen, cashier and cook jobs ranked in the top five jobs for both the school year and the summer. Girls in the same age group tended to work as cashiers, at food counters, in retail sales, and in restaurants.

Most teens are employed as hourly workers. In 1998 the average amount earned by employed teens between the ages of fifteen and seventeen was $5.57 (Report on the Youth Labor Force, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, DC, June 2000). In 2003 9.9% of

TABLE 4.9

Estimated annual expenditures on children born in 2003, by income group
		Income group
Year	Age	Lowest	Middle	Highest
Note: Estimates are for the younger child in husband-wife families with two children.
SOURCE: Mark Lino, "Table 12. Estimated Annual Expenditures on Children Born in 2003, by Income Group, Overall United States," in Expenditures on Children by Families, 2003 Annual Report, Miscellaneous Publication No. 1528-2003, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2004, http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/Crc/crc2003.pdf (accessed August 24, 2004)
2003	<1	$6,820	$9,510	$14,140
2004	1	7,030	9,800	14,580
2005	2	7,250	10,110	15,030
2006	3	7,640	10,720	15,860
2007	4	7,880	11,050	16,350
2008	5	8,120	11,390	16,860
2009	6	8,460	11,690	17,100
2010	7	8,720	12,050	17,630
2011	8	8,990	12,420	18,180
2012	9	9,200	12,640	18,480
2013	10	9,490	13,030	19,050
2014	11	9,780	13,430	19,640
2015	12	11,310	14,930	21,420
2016	13	11,660	15,390	22,080
2017	14	12,020	15,870	22,770
2018	15	12,280	16,690	24,270
2019	16	12,660	17,210	25,020
2020	17	13,060	17,740	25,790
Total		$172,370	$235,670	$344,250

teenagers earned the minimum hourly wage of $5.15 or less (Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers: 2003,U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 10, 2004, http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2003.htm [accessed July 15, 2004]).

How Does Working Affect Academic Achievement?

A September/October 2001 article in the Journal of Educational Research (Kimberly J. Quirk et al., "Employment during High School and Student Achievement") presented the results of a longitudinal study examining the effects of high-school student employment on academic achievement. The researchers concluded that "working displayed a moderate, significant, and negative effect on high school grades." However, smaller amounts of work (twelve hours or less per week) seemed to slightly improve grades. The researchers also found that the lower a student's grades were, the more likely he or she was to get a job.

A 2000 report by the U.S. Department of Labor ("The Relationship of Youth Employment to Future Educational Attainment and Labor Market Experience," in Report on the Youth Labor Force) found a correlation between teen employment and future college education. More than half of adults who had worked one to twenty hours per week as sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds were more likely than other adults to have completed at least some college education

FIGURE 4.5

by age thirty. In contrast, less than half of adults who had not worked at all or who had worked more than twenty hours per week had completed some college education. The findings suggested that working a limited number of hours in the junior and senior years of high school has a positive effect on educational attainment.

Working Teens and Trouble

In November 1998 a committee of the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine issued a report that warned about the dangers of teenage employment. The national panel of scientists said that young people who worked more than twenty hours a week, regardless of their economic background, were less likely to finish high school and more likely to use drugs and run into trouble with the police.

Risky behaviors may also increase with teen employment. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Youth Behavior Risk Survey, reported in the Journal of Child and Family Studies (Robert F. Valois et al., "Association between Employment and Sexual Risk-Taking Behaviors among Public High School Adolescents," June 1998), demonstrated a link between employment and sexual risk-taking for both genders and all races. Students working more than ten hours per week were more likely to have sexually transmitted diseases or unintended pregnancies than other teens.