Stephen Yeargin

The Subway inside a convenience store down the street from work always has a “Help Wanted” sign tucked behind the sneeze guard. According to the nightly news and climbing unemployment, it is probably a fairly uncommon sight to see these days. The woman who manages the business (or at least, the only one that works every day and tells other employees what to do and how quickly to do it) runs off her fair share of help. In the year and a half that I have been eating there, I can recall a steady procession of employees that “just did not work out.” She is nice enough to the customers (if she knows you), but its hardly the Southern Hospitality most patrons are accustomed to at other restaurants. It is also likely the reason the sign is a permanent fixture.

I worked for more than year at a convenience store as a teenager in west Tennessee as a way to make a bit of extra money and to keep busy. Truth be told, I would probably have accepted half the menial rate I was paid just to have an excuse to stay away from my house, a tradition that continued after a move across the state and right up until leaving for college. Teenagers these days are having a particularly hard time finding work if they do not have the right connections.

As summer arrives, the job market for teens is suffering along with the rest of the economy. And those jobs will be harder to find this year for the poorer kids who need them the most as laid-off adults compete for work at the lowest rung.

“Summer is a time when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” said Ron Fairchild, executive director of the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University.

Wealthier teens are more likely to have the family and school connections that help them land summer jobs — as counselors at the camps they attend, lifeguards at the pools where they swim and clerks at the stores where they shop.

Last summer, half of teens whose families earned $75,000 to $100,000 worked, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Less than a third of teens from families making less than $20,000 had work.

Both my wife and I enjoy gainful employment at relatively stable jobs (her business is booming, my industry is riding out a market correction), but I see how a high unemployment rate among teens can lead to many other problems. Lower income households often depend on teenagers to share their income to supplement groceries, rent and utilities. Compulsory education limits this activity for nine months out of the year, but the summers provide a reprieve from the strict laws that limit hours during the school year.

With the current state of the economy, many managers are forced to choose among the teenagers, laid off workers in a number of industries associated with the housing and credit market collapse and retirees re-entering the work force in order to fill gaps left by faltering retirement funds and rising health care costs. In almost all cases, the teenager is the first one to be shown the door. A recent survey of CFOs suggests that any hope of recovery will have to wait until the second half of 2009.