While teenagers around many urban areas could have trouble finding retail jobs this summer, experts say Cape Cod could provide a wealth of opportunity in another area — restaurants. This year, Congress didn’t renew an immigration agreement that normally allows more than 5,000 foreigners to work for the summer on the Cape, leaving some employers scrambling for help.
BOSTON. Due to a down economy and Massachusetts wage laws, experts say this could be a tough summer for teens looking to get traditional retail jobs.
Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies recently released a study that found that teen employment rates have been declining sharply since the fall of 2006. The report also found that the 2008 summer-job outlook for teenagers across the country is even worse than last year.
Nationally, only about one-third of teens are expected to get summer jobs.
“This summer definitely does not look good,” said Joseph McLaughlin, a research associate at the Center and one of the report’s authors. He said the percentage of teens in Massachusetts working summers in 2006 and 2007 is down 10 percent from 1999 and 2000.
The retail sector employs about 560,000 jobs throughout Massachusetts, but that number is down several thousand jobs in recent months, according to Jon B. Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.
To make matters worse, unlike other states, Massachusetts doesn’t have a lower teenager “training” wage than its minimum wage ($8 an hour), and since Massachusetts is one of two states to award retail workers time-and-a-half pay on Sundays, Hurst said employers may elect to hire more experienced workers or retirees over teenagers.
“The teenager really has a big competitive problem,” Hurst said. “For many teens, this is their first job. If you don’t have any experience, you will take more training up front, and it is much more difficult for an employer to get a return on the investment.”
