Challenger, Gray & Christmas projects teens will gain just 790,000 jobs across the three core summer months this year — a figure that would mark a new low in data going back to 1948. Teen unemployment stands at 14.4%, more than three times the national average of 4.3%, and labor force participation among 16-to-19-year-olds sits at 35.8% — roughly in line with post-financial crisis trends, but well below the brief post-pandemic peak of 38% reached between 2022 and 2024.
The entertainment and leisure sector, which has historically been the backbone of teen summer hiring, is planning to fill 70% fewer roles than last year. The contraction is happening against a backdrop of broader structural change in which the same forces reducing teen employment are also reshaping entry-level work more broadly.
Read more via The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, CBS News
The squeeze is coming from multiple directions simultaneously, affecting both the supply of jobs and the pool of teens seeking them.
Rising inflation and fuel costs are pressuring the restaurants, amusement parks, summer camps, and small businesses that have long been the primary source of teen summer work. These employers operate on thin margins in normal conditions; the current cost environment is making teen hiring — which requires training investment for often short-tenure workers — a harder economic case to make.
Automation has displaced some of the positions that once served as the most common entry points for younger workers, including order-taking and customer service functions. These roles didn't disappear overnight, but their steady erosion has meaningfully reduced the inventory of jobs well-suited to first-time workers.
Higher minimum wages are leading some employers to favor older, more experienced workers over inexperienced teens when filling the roles that remain. If the wage floor is higher, the productivity and reliability expectations that come with it rise accordingly — and teens, by definition, are competing without a track record.
Teens are up against older workers who have remained in the labor force longer than previous generations, driven by affordability pressures and inadequate retirement savings. That competition is most acute in exactly the seasonal and service roles where teens have traditionally found their footing.
The supply side is contracting too. Fewer teens are seeking traditional summer employment, with college prep, club sports, year-round internships, and online side hustles drawing their attention away from conventional summer jobs. As Andy Challenger, Chief Revenue Officer at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, put it:
"This isn't the teen workforce of the 1980s. Today's 16-to-19-year-olds are balancing AP coursework, caretaking for their families, club sports that run year-round, summer enrichment programs, paid internships, and online side hustles."
Read more via The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, CBS News, St. Louis Public Radio, WFSB Connecticut
The national picture looks different depending on local conditions and industry mix.
New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program has already surpassed last year's record of 200,000 applications for just 100,000 openings — a 2:1 ratio that illustrates the demand-supply gap in concentrated urban markets. In Central Georgia, one 17-year-old reported applying to more than 100 positions since January with little response.
In Missouri, leisure and hospitality shed jobs in April even as the state's overall unemployment held steady at 3.8% — a signal that the teen job squeeze isn't evenly distributed across sectors even within stable regional labor markets.
In Connecticut, Quassy Amusement Park is still looking to fill more than 100 summer positions but notes that higher wages make inexperienced teen hires a harder call. On Cape Cod, a popular ice cream shop filled 50 summer slots quickly after receiving hundreds of applications starting in January — where openings exist, competition is fierce.
Two sectors are bucking the trend: advertised lifeguard positions are up 78% from this time last year, and retail's projected share of teen summer jobs is expected to reach 9%, up from 2.3% in 2025.
Read more via 13WMAZ, St. Louis Public Radio, WFSB Connecticut, The Wall Street Journal
The forces compressing teen summer employment — automation displacing entry-level roles, employers raising experience thresholds, older workers staying in the workforce longer — are the same structural pressures reshaping hiring at every level. Teen summer jobs have historically served as the first rung on the career ladder, providing early workforce experience that compounds over time. A generation entering the labor market without that foundation has implications that extend well beyond any single summer.
For HR and workforce planning leaders, the trend is worth tracking not as a teen issue but as an early indicator: the entry-level pipeline is narrowing, the experience gap among younger candidates is widening, and the structural conditions driving both show no signs of reversing.
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