It’s costing Julian Avalos, owner of Two Crepes in Union City, a little more, but there’s not much else he can do.
He closed one of its locations during the pandemic and is now paying $2 more an hour to attract employees. That means teenagers can earn $14 an hour coming in with no experience, Avalos said.
“What we pay definitely increased the likelihood of more people applying and wanting to stay longer,” he said, noting that he has two teen employees and envisions hiring more when the need arises.
Likewise, Mary Jane Riva, CEO of the Pizza Factory, has a cautionary message for her customers this summer: Prepare to wait longer for your Hawaiian pie or calzone.
With about 12 employees per store, the Pizza Factory’s 100 West Coast locations are barely half-staffed — just when many more Americans are venturing out to restaurant chains like hers.
“The days of 15-minute orders,” Riva said, “may not be happening anymore.”
Talk to other employers in America’s vast hospitality sector — hotels, restaurants, public pools, ice cream parlors, pick-your-own strawberry farms — and you’ll hear a similar lament. They can’t fill many of their summer jobs because the number of open positions far exceeds the number of people willing and able to fill them — even at increased wages.
Some help may be coming: School’s out for summer, cutting loose millions of high school and college students for the next three months. Riva, for one, is hoping to field more job applications from students
seeking summertime spending money.
Teens are in an unusually commanding position — at least those among them who want a job. Researchers at Drexel University’s Center for Labor Markets and Policy predicted in a report last month
that an average of 33% of youths ages 16 to 19 will be employed each month from June through August this year, the highest such rate since 34% in the summer of 2007.
Among them is Samuel Castillo, a 19-year-old four-year veteran of Miami’s Summer Jobs Connect program who’s already built an impressive resume. In one former job with the program, he worked in a
legislative office, registering constituent complaints. His first summer, he saved $900 to buy parts to build his own computer.
Now, he’s studying computer engineering technology in college and working in the Jobs Connect program again this summer, earning $15 an hour teaching other students how to manage money.
“The goal for working is to pay my bills,” he said. “School costs money. Books cost money.’’
Some businesses in Hudson County attract and employ teenagers every summer and expect to again this year. Bayonne’s old-school Magic Fountain ice cream shop is one of those places, the owner said, and Skyway Golf Course does as well.
Neither has been having staffing challenges nor has had to adjust wages, the managers said. In fact, Skyway has seen more applicants than usual, said general manager Steve Mills.
“You get to work outside, be in nice weather, and it’s not too stressful,” Mills said. “You’re probably going to see a higher (application) rate there than you’re going to in a sit-down office or a laborer position, even food or beverage.”
Lara Beckius, a junior at Connecticut College, said she went from being stressed out about finding a summer job to being stressed out about choosing among multiple offers. In the end, Beckius settled on an internship at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine.
“It was a little crazy,” said Beckius, a 19-year-old from Avon,Connecticut. “It went from, ‘Am I going to have something this summer?’ to having four opportunities and, ‘Which one am I going to take?’ "
This year, for the first time in a couple of years, employers might get more help from overseas. After restricting immigration as a COVID-19 precaution, the government is beginning to loosen up: The U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services has raised the limit on H-2B temporary work permits — used for seasonal work — by 35,000 visas.
Cape Resorts, which operates several boutique hotels, cottages and restaurants in Cape May and elsewhere in New Jersey and New York, will employ about 120 international students this summer on J-1 visas, work permits that also serve as a kind of cultural exchange program.
“Finding staff that are eager to fill hospitality roles remains a challenge,” said Cindy D’Aoust, a company executive. “But it is great to see the return of our international students as well as returning college students for the summer season.”
Still, today’s level of teen employment isn’t close to what it used to be. In August 1978, 50% of America’s teenagers were working. Around 2000, teenage employment went into a decade-long slide. In June 2010, during the agonizingly slow recovery from the 2007-2009 Great Recession, teenage employment bottomed at 25% before slowly rising again as the economy recovered.
It was more than economic doldrums that kept teens away from work. Longer-term economic forces and changing personal choices contributed, too. The U.S. economy now offers fewer low-skill, entry level jobs — ready-made for teens — than in the 1970s and 1980s.
Many such jobs that do remain, from supermarket clerk to fast-food burger flipper, are increasingly likely to be taken by older workers, many of them immigrants.
But COVID and its economic damage changed everything. At first, the economy collapsed as businesses locked down and consumers hunkered down at home. Soon, vast federal aid and ultra-low interest rates ignited an unexpectedly fast recovery. Businesses scrambled to recall employees they had laid off and to find new ones to keep up with resurgent customer orders.
The U.S. unemployment rate has dropped to 3.6%, just above a half century low. This week, the government reported that employers posted 11.4 job openings in April, down from a record 11.9 million in March but still extraordinarily high.
On average, there are now roughly two jobs available for every unemployed American.
Suddenly, teenagers are in much greater demand. And the pay available to them — $15 or $16 an hour for entry-level work — is drawing some back into the job market. Teenage employment has already topped pre-pandemic levels even though the overall job market still hasn’t.
Lauren Gonzalez, who operates two hostels with her sister — The Local in New York and Lolo Pass in Portland, Oregon — is looking for a barista, a bartender, an events manager and a sales manager. She recently raised pay for housekeepers and receptionists, jobs that she had previously had little trouble filling.
“I definitely throw my hands in the air sometimes and say: ‘Where is everyone?’ "
Jersey Journal Staff Writer Teri West contributed to this report.