Teenagers shouldn’t have trouble looking for work this summer, with post-COVID gaps in workforce

Don’t be surprised if it’s a crew of largely teenagers making your McChicken sandwich, supervising city pools, tending to Riverfront Park or stocking shelves at favorite stores this summer.

Teenagers looking for work to fill their time and their wallets are poised to have a successful job hunt, due in large part to labor trends coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and generational shifts in the labor market.

A side effect of the pandemic was an “increasingly tight labor market,” said Mike McBride, business and industry analyst with the Spokane Workforce Council. Post-pandemic labor trends indicate more kids 16-18 are joining the workforce in entry-level positions to fill the gaps left by those who either quit to pursue a different field or retired during COVID closures.

“That’s really good for teenagers, because in typical economic times they have really high unemployment rates and have a difficult time getting into the labor force and having employers take chances on them,” McBride said.

Additionally, demographic trends indicate retirement-aged people will outnumber children in a decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. As the workforce grays, there is a shrinking pool of qualified workers to replace them.

Another recent phenomenon shaping the workforce landscape has been 2022’s “Great Resignation,” in which 50.5 million people quit their jobs nationwide, beating the record set the year prior. Many transitioned from service industry jobs to careers that may require skills honed during the pandemic. Their exodus from service industry roles leaves employers looking for laborers.

Enter the teenagers.

Teen unemployment declined sharply after the pandemic. In Spokane County, the estimated unemployment rate for 16-19-year-olds was 25.8% in 2019, 19% in 2020, 18.6% in 2021 and has reduced to an estimated 11.1% in 2022, according to an annual survey conducted by the Bureau.

“Ever since the recovery has occurred since the pandemic, people have left the labor force and are just not coming back,” McBride said. “So bringing in the populations of teenagers more and more into the labor force as best businesses can has been a strategy to fill the entry-level jobs, typically.”

Not only are more teenagers entering the workforce with ample options for work, chains are subsequently raising wages to entice applicants and compete with other employers.

“That really is indicative of the desperation for workers, that a lot of fast food chains now have to pay higher than minimum wage,” McBride said.

It’s not just traditional entry-level jobs like in fast food and retail that are seeing both an increased demand and supply of teenaged employees. Programs like Wagstaff Applied Technology’s Production and Manufacturing Institute are paid options for students to practice a trade or test-run a career in manufacturing.

“There’s definitely a lot more opportunities out there across the board, and that’s just indicative of the overall labor market and where it’s at,” McBride said.

The three-week program that pays $1,000 for completion is popular with students interested in dipping their toes into the world of manufacturing, said Institute Program Director Wade Larson.

“They’re going to be exposed to what manufacturing is like from top to bottom; we’ll take them out to real workplaces and give them field trips to manufacturers,” Larson said. “We’ll show them what it’s like.”

In the program, incoming high school juniors and seniors are sorted into groups to run a mock manufacturing business, for which they’re delegated roles and tasks that mirror real industry and eventually sell products they’ve crafted online. Applications are due May 17. They can be found at manufacturinginstitute.net/application.

Programs such as the manufacturing institute benefit the trades industries, which can recruit students or spur interest through this exposure. The same generational gap that plagues service industries is causing a lag between retirees in the trades and incoming students, Larson said.

Exposure to students from these trade industries can be an effective recruitment tool by building trust and name recognition between students and employers, said Matthew Himlie, career pathways manager at Greater Spokane Incorporated.

“The way that that helps is a student gets to experience what that line of work is like, maybe that solidifies for them that’s a career field they want to go into or maybe helps them see it’s a career field they don’t want; either way, that’s helpful information,” Himlie said.

The city is hiring a number of seasonal, part-time positions accepting teenage applicants, including at parks, pools and summer camps. Job postings can be found at my.spokanecity.org/jobs/temporary-seasonal.

Seasonal jobs in private industries, like food service, retail, entertainment and childcare, are also common work for teenagers during their summers.

Given demographic trends, McBride expects the ball to stay in teenagers’ hands when it comes to finding summer work.

“The demographic shift that’s happening is not slowing down; in fact, it will only increase year after year after year after year. It’s not a situation that will self-correct itself,” McBride said. “So it really has to be a kind of shift in the mindset of a lot of employers in taking chances on young people, because that’s kind of what they’ll have available for those jobs.”