It’s summer, and chances are many teenagers you know are still without a job.
For the second year, the job market for teenagers has been tight — as it has been for their parents. Last summer the Bureau of Labor Statistics said 51.4 percent of people between ages 16 and 24 were employed in July, down 4.6 percentage points from the year before and an all-time low since 1948. This year may be just as bad — or even worse, some experts think.
In Maplewood and South Orange, this summer has not been any easier, said Paula Sabreen and John Surface of Family Connections New Jersey. The organization has offices in several schools, including Columbia High School, and helps students at those schools find employment. Ms. Sabreen, the organization’s executive director, and Mr. Surface, director of communications, said their school-based efforts faced a tougher market this summer than in previous years.
The Local sat down with Ms. Sabreen and Mr. Surface to discuss the new challenges teens face in seeking employment, and how Family Connections has tried to address them. Here are the highlights, slightly edited for brevity and clarity:
The Local: Can you give some background on Family Connections and The Loft at Columbia High school?
Paula Sabreen: Family Connections has been around for over a hundred years, though not by this name. We have been running school-based programs since the year 2000 and we started our first school-based program at Orange High School and we have been at Columbia for…
John Surface: We’re going into our fifth year.
Ms. Sabreen: And during that time, we also were able to secure services at Maplewood Middle School and that’s called The Hub.
The Local: It’s been tough to find a job across the board these days. How has that been affecting operations at Family Connections?
Ms. Sabreen: Well, it’s been the same for us, so the economy has, in fact, made it much more difficult for us to help students find jobs. We typically try and go to the community and find opportunities for students, but this year that’s been very, very difficult to do…. The college students get out much earlier than high school students, so they grab up so many of the jobs that some of the high school teens could possibly secure.
Mr. Surface: And used to get in previous years.
The Local: And would that be a result of the college students not getting the jobs that they used to get?
Mr. Surface: Exactly. It’s a trickle-down effect.
The Local: What types of jobs were you able to secure for high school students in the past that now are more competitive to get?
Mr. Surface: Well, all kinds. You know, we would go to the major chain stores, you know, Target, Wal-Mart, that sort of thing, particularly anything close. It’s hard for teenagers if they don’t drive to get to jobs, so we’d go canvas the mall in Livingston, different places and find stores that hired teenagers and find out what their application process was, if they had a specific application we’d take copies back, and grocery stores around here.
Ms. Sabreen: And I think some local businesses. Because, again, transportation for some kids can be a real challenge if they don’t have a car. One of the areas where we have been somewhat successful in terms of helping kids get employment is through these certified babysitting courses that we run. And we do get phone calls looking for teens who have passed this course and are certified to babysit. It’s a Red Cross certification.
The Local: Has that resulted in an increase of teens getting babysitting jobs?
Ms. Sabreen: I think it’s increased because more kids are taking it knowing that there’s so many less options out there.
Mr. Surface: One of the things that … the person in charge of our employment assistance [has mentioned] is at the end of this school year, unlike any other school year, he had not only kids but parents calling up who in the past had had no trouble getting part-time jobs for the summer and had kind of left it late, assuming they were going to get the job they had last year and then it wasn’t there after all. Some college kid got it instead, so there’s been increased demand, but jobs just aren’t out there.
The Local: Do you see a range in parental involvement with teens getting jobs?
Mr. Surface: South Orange-Maplewood has a very broad spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds.
Ms. Sabreen: There’s some kids who are able to use their parents contacts to get jobs, but there’s others where that kind of opportunity does not exist for them.
The Local: Last summer was not an ideal time to find a job either. Has this year been any sort of improvement?
Mr. Surface: No.
Ms. Sabreen: No.
The Local: Were there any additional steps or plans of action that you took this year?
Mr. Surface: The staff who oversee our employment services, they pound the pavement looking for jobs and when those were not forthcoming, they tried to help kids identify internships that they could do instead, non-paying jobs that contribute later to possible paying jobs. We increased the babysitting classes. We have a Web site, we are on the Maplewood Online Web site as a babysitting service, so we try and link kids to families and sort of coach them on how to start their own babysitting company, how to promote themselves in their own neighborhoods.
The Local: What are the consequences of a kid not finding a job?
Ms. Sabreen: Well, they can get into trouble. I mean, all kidding aside, that is a concern and during the school year, we also work very hard at trying to find kids after-school jobs, because the kids want the jobs; they tell us that. They can get into trouble, they hang out in places they probably shouldn’t be, if they were wanting to work for extra money and they didn’t have it, that can lead to additional possible getting into trouble and getting into, you know, activities that aren’t good.
Mr. Surface: And there’s the positive side of kids having work.
Ms. Sabreen: Right, right. You know, one of the things that we do all year, because we feel knowing how to work is such an important skill to have, we teach resume writing, we teach kids how to look online for opportunities, how to behave on a job, how to dress on a job, how to interact with a supervisor, ’cause some of the kids are really clueless. And so we practice that with them all year round, employability skills…. Kids having too much idle time all summer long can lead to trouble.
View the original article here
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