Teens flood summer job market
Brian Jones knows he is lucky to have a job while home for the summer from college.
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Ashley Baum, 17, a Lakeside High School student, has a summer job as lifeguard at Petersburg Racquet Club for the third year in a row.
Photo by Jim Blaylock
"Believe me I know," said the student at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville.
He returned in mid-May, when he accepted a job at a gourmet food store that just wasn't working out, he said. Jones kept looking and spent two weeks unemployed before being hired at Bruster's Old Fashioned Ice Cream and Yogurt in Evans.
Jamie Deyoe, Bruster's manager, said Jones was hired the day he applied, but she still has a huge folder on her desk filled with at least 150 applications, mostly from teens looking for summer jobs.
"There's a lot more than we can hire, hundreds of applications," Deyoe said.
Between 15 and 20 new employees were added to the Bruster's staff for the summer, but most were hired in early May, Deyoe said.
Since the summer of 2000, when slightly more than half of teens over 16 found summer jobs, the availability of jobs for them has gradually declined, according to a study released in May by the Center for Labor Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.
Nearly 90 percent of teens nationally - and 86.1 percent of Georgia teens - anticipated finding a job this summer, according to a Junior Achievement poll released early this month.
While the job market is even tighter for teens, they keep trying.
Ashley Baum, 17, a Lakeside High School student, has a summer job as lifeguard at Petersburg Racquet Club for the third year in a row.
Photo by Jim Blaylock
John Silva, manager of the Kmart store in Martinez, said his store receives a steady stream of 25 to 30 job applications a week. Silva said about 12 were hired before the summer to replace teen employees leaving for college and to stay on after school begins in August.
Those who were hired were found through job fairs held in April and May.
Getting out early was the key for area teens able to land the seasonal jobs.
Jeremy Williams, 16, lives in McCormick County and has driven to work at the Kroger grocery store in Evans everyday since he was hired in March. He applied at other grocery stores before being called back to Kroger.
"They gave me an opportunity, and I jumped at it," Jeremy said.
But Debra Ellis, Kroger's manager, said the store hires continuously. Up to 25 teens are hired for the summer to cover vacations of regular full-time employees, she said.
"As a manager, I appreciate (them) because it makes less work for me," Ellis said. "But (hiring) is continuous, the needs of the business are ongoing. Some work out, some don't. We could hire five or six more people right now."
Teens work for different reasons.
In Georgia, nearly 30 percent of teens work for extra spending money and 26 percent to pay for a car, according to the Junior Achievement poll. Less than 20 percent work to help support their families or to save money for college.
Jeremy, a rising high school senior, said he works to pay for his personal bills and expenses, including his car insurance and cell phone bill.
Jeremy Williams has a summer job bagging groceries at Kroger in Evans.
Photo by Jim Blaylock
Jones said he works to pay for everything other than housing expenses while home from college.
"I need to pay for living expenses, spending money and gas money," he said. "Luckily, I don't have a car payment. But anything that I want to do, I have to pay for."
Brian Jones, 19, has just started a summer job at Bruster's Ice Cream on Belair Road.
Photo by Jim Blaylock