You’re in high school, the year is out, sleep is in and summer afternoons are open canvases. Right?
Wrong.
For some high school students, the once empty months of summer have become a time of employment.
“I thought to myself, I thought I really needed more money in the bank,” said Will Clements, 16. “I knew I was going to have so much extra time on my hands, and I knew working would keep me busy. Plus, I wouldn’t be bored.”
Clements, who will begin the 10th grade at Pillow Academy this fall, is spending the summer working at Twin Rivers Recreation. His duties include working the concession stand, cleaning up and “just helping out,” and each paycheck goes into a checking account.
“I don’t just go out and spend it all,” he said.
This isn’t his first summer job. The Nashville, Tenn., native has previously worked at McAlister’s Deli, and prior to that he helped at his father’s roofing business.
Economists would say Clements is lucky. The national economic downturn has made 2008’s job market one of the weakest in more than half a century for high school students wanting employment.
According to a recently published article from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, “teen employment rates have been declining sharply since the fall of 2006, well before the national job market began to deteriorate, and the drop has accelerated in recent months.”
As some families gather spare nickels from every corner to go toward gasoline and groceries, a teen’s summer fun fund might be one of the first corners to get cut.
Greenwood teenager Morgan Cannon’s parents told her if she didn’t work at her father’s car lot, she was going to work somewhere this summer. So Cannon, a 15-year-old who will also begin the 10th grade at Pillow next year, got a job near something she loves – books.
“I picked here because I love to read,” Cannon said of her summer job at Turnrow Book Co.
While they might be missing out on tans and sand, Clements and Cannon aren’t bitter about working.
“This is a good place to work,” Clements said of Twin Rivers. “I enjoy it and meet a lot of new people.”
Cannon’s parents won’t pay for her gasoline or dining out, so that’s where most of her money goes.
“Or on books,” said Cannon, who hopes to work in publishing someday. “I hope to do something with books. Maybe a writer or book critic.”
For now, though, she’s at the cafe upstairs at Turnrow, biding her summer until school begins.
