By Michael Hicks
Guest Columnist

Michael Hicks

The school year is winding down and high school and college students alike are looking for summer jobs or internships. In some respects, these job experiences seem surprisingly distant from those of my youth. In other ways, they are very similar. As both an employer of college students and father of two still in school, I have a few economic insights on summer work.

My summer jobs in the late 1970s and early 1980s were primarily pure, unskilled work. I mowed lawns, painted fences and mucked horse stables. In the summer after high school, I worked on a labor crew for the National Park Service. I mostly cleared trails, laid rock walls and cleaned bathrooms. After one year of college, I was promoted to crew chief, and at age 18 took charge of 10 other workers.

For me, summer work was about earning money, avoiding summer boredom, and having an opportunity to learn. I learned about people, equipment and responsibility. Those lessons haven’t changed at all with today’s summer jobs. In fact, the development of these skills is increasingly important for kids today.

Everyone I knew in high school worked in the summer months. By 2000, the share of 16 to 19 year-olds working in the summer had dropped to 51.8%, and as of 2020 it was down to 1 in 3 kids. Of course, part of the recent decline is due to COVID, but formal jobs for high school and college students are more uncommon than in any previous time.

There are many reasons why summer jobs are less common today. A very large share of college students take summer classes, which often make employment difficult. Summer breaks also are shorter than they were 40 years ago. This makes it less enticing for employers to invest in training workers. Shorter summer breaks also limit family vacation time, which further interrupt worker availability.

My hunch is that the biggest reason for the decline in summer jobs is that many teens today are far busier than they were when I was a kid. In many high school sports, competitive athletes are expected to train throughout the summer. Dance, music and performing arts programs also fill summer breaks, as do academically focused programs. This leaves far less time for a traditional job.

The curmudgeon in me wants to talk badly about today’s youngsters, but that is not what I see as a father and professor. My kids and their friends spent too many 8-hour lifeguard shifts sandwiched between grueling two-a-day practices for me to judge their work ethic harshly.

The college students who work for me often hold at least one job and an internship throughout the summer. Many also take summer classes. A large share also spend their summers in military service. Tens of thousands of young people spend summers at military academies, performing summer training programs to become officers, or complete basic training, Reserve or National Guard service.

Summer work today is less likely to be agricultural, construction or manufacturing than it was in 1980. There are still plenty of service sector jobs, such as lifeguarding, retail and restaurant work. Daycare, summer camps and the like are still hiring, and jobs are plentiful. So too are data entry and lower-skilled tech jobs. I hire students to collect and manage data, construct data visualizations and author studies. These occupations scarcely existed when I was a teen, and where they did were far different.

Tighter labor markets make pay better today than in the previous-COVID decade. My first formal job, as a laborer, paid a minimum wage of $3.10 per hour, which in today’s dollars is $11.30. Few employers in Indiana who offer $11.30 per hour this summer will find workers. Unskilled summer workers in depressed markets should expect to find $12 to $15 per hour. The jobs offering better pay either will require more skills, be performed in dirty or unpleasant conditions, or require unpopular hours. Jobs like this will always command a premium.

Of course, there’s more to these summer jobs than just an hourly wage. Reasonable, predictable schedules are critical to young workers and their families. Many students won’t have transportation, so finding jobs that are close to home may be more important than a slightly higher wage.

The ability to learn and grow on a job is also valuable for young workers. My high school job involved axes, shovels and a sling blade. No one expected my boss to write a thoughtful evaluation of my potential as a student or manager. Today, many young people rely upon summer job experience as an important discriminator in college acceptance or future work.

This marks an important opportunity for employers. The way to set your workplace apart from others is to ensure formal training and mentoring as well as guaranteeing a written performance evaluation that outlines the skills that the employee learned while on the job. These are very important tools for young workers and should be a more common part of business practices.

The role of summer employment is also of growing importance to our state’s economy. The steep decline in college attendance means that close to 10% more Hoosier high school graduates each year are entering the workforce directly. This is very costly to the Indiana economy, with lifetime loss of income to these workers ranges from $5.4 billion to $10 billion per age cohort. A further decade of even static college attendance rates will reverse per capita income growth in the state.

Businesses wishing to operate in a prosperous, growing economy have a key role in setting expectations for young workers. Obtaining more skills is critical, and it would be ideal if employers pushed summer workers to pursue more education before launching fully into careers. Chick-fil-A is a model summer employer in this regard, as are Lowe’s, Home Depot, McDonald’s, Papa Johns and Starbucks.

As we emerge from COVID into a period of tighter labor markets, summer jobs will matter more. The success of these labor markets will increasingly influence the longer-term economic conditions for workers, employers and the state as a whole.

Michael J. Hicks, PhD, is the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research and the George and Frances Ball distinguished professor of economics in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University. Hicks earned doctoral and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Tennessee and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Virginia Military Institute. He has authored two books and more than 60 scholarly works focusing on state and local public policy, including tax and expenditure policy and the impact of Wal-Mart on local economies.