No, There Isn't a Shortage of Summer Jobs for Teens — The Data Shows the Opposite

You've probably heard it: teenagers today can't find summer jobs, and the opportunities that existed for previous generations have dried up. It's a compelling story — but the data says it isn't true. By nearly every measure, the teen summer job market is thriving, not shrinking.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that roughly 20.1 million young people aged 16-24 were employed in July 2023. The employment-population ratio for 16-to-19-year-olds hit approximately 37% in summer 2022, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — a level not seen since before the 2008 recession. That's not a shortage. That's a boom.

Pew Research Center confirmed the trend, finding that more teens worked in summer 2022 than at any point since 2008. The tight post-pandemic labor market actually worked in teenagers' favor. Indeed's Hiring Lab found that employers in retail, food service, and hospitality were actively competing to hire younger workers because they couldn't find enough of them.

The strongest version of this claim points to real history: teen employment did collapse after the 2008 financial crisis and stayed depressed for years. That was genuine and painful. But that era is over. If anything, the current problem runs the other way — the National Conference of State Legislatures notes that several states have been loosening child labor laws specifically in response to high employer demand for younger workers. The shortage is of teen workers, not teen jobs.

This myth spreads partly because it feels true. Broader worries about young people spending more time on screens than in the workforce, combined with vivid memories of post-2008 hardship, make the shortage story easy to believe. When you see a claim about teen jobs, check whether the data cited is recent — a lot of the gloom describes a labor market that no longer exists.