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A quarter-century ago, there were 56 teenagers in the labor force for every "limited service" restaurant — that is, the kind where you order at the counter.
Today, there are fewer than half as many, which is a reflection both of teenagers' decreasing work force participation and of the explosive growth in restaurants.
But in an industry where cheap labor is an essential component in providing inexpensive food, a shortage of workers is changing the equation upon which fast-food places have long relied. This can be seen in rising wages, in a growth of incentives, and in the sometimes odd situations that business owners find themselves in.
Too many restaurants, not enough teens to work in them.
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A Fast-Food Problem: Where Have All the Teenagers Gone?
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @04:29PM (3 children)
The teen gets "free" transportation from a parent. The cost of that is an investment in the teen's future, much like college is. The goal here is to get references and something to solve the problem of an empty resume. It breaks even, in exactly the same way as college does.
There are teens doing it for a wage of $0.00 per hour, which is somehow acceptable ("volunteer work") but $0.01 per hour is somehow not acceptable. We even allow negative wages ("vocational training program") but we don't allow wages within a small range just above zero.
My teen got a job. He reports that his coworkers, not counting management of course, can be classified into two groups. One group is teens from mid-upper to wealthy families. The other is fucked up adults who commute in from poor areas. It's easy to explain the lack of adults who have their shit together, but what about the lack of poor teens? I think they don't have parents pushing them hard to take career steps. I think the poor teens devote time to TV, the internet, and game players. Perhaps they do something more harmful. In any case, the poor teens are not out there working. Teens like mine, who don't really even need the money, are the only ones working.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 19 2018, @05:00PM
The teen gets "free" transportation from a parent. The cost of that is an investment in the teen's future, much like college is. The goal here is to get references and something to solve the problem of an empty resume. It breaks even, in exactly the same way as college does.
For the well to do parents with enough free time to taxi their kids around all day... For everyone else: Fuck you, got mine!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Marand on Friday July 20 2018, @02:34AM
Maybe not intentional, but all your examples conveniently lay the blame on them in a "it's their own fault, they're doing it wrong" sort of way. Looking at the various other threads in this discussion about commute times and transportation costs, it seems like another possibility is that maybe the poor kids' families sometimes simply can't manage it. Having the kid bring in some extra income sounds like a win for a cash-strapped family, but it might cost them money they can't afford to lose due to time spent transporting the kid to work. Employers in low-end jobs really like jerking around the employees' hours to keep them out of full-time classification, which leads to people trying to juggle two or even three part-time jobs to make the necessary income to live. How do you ferry around your teen at the whims of another jackass employer's scheduling in that situation? The easy answer would be "just get another vehicle" but that adds even more costs.
Another possibility is some of those poor families are probably trying to keep their kids out of the workforce so they can spend more time studying, hoping to give the kids better opportunities than their parents had. I'm sure there's just as much indifference and other negative reasons too, because families are as different as the people that make them, but only listing negatives like you did makes it sound like you're accusing "the poors" of being poor of their own choice and deliberately (or perhaps just ignorantly) keeping their offspring unsuccessful as well. Again, that was probably not your intent, but the way you worded it carried a hint of self-assured arrogance that your parenting choices are superior, with no consideration of the different situations other parents might be in and how that might influence their decisions. Poor or not, I think most parents want their children to succeed and try to help with that in whatever ways they think they can.
Going off on a tangent a bit, I've seen similar short-sightedness in discussions about cost of living, especially with regard to food costs. Something that always comes up is a suggestion to buy bulk items to save money; it seems like a no-brainer option since reduced packaging costs usually means you get more of what you want for less money. So, every time it comes up, someone inevitably laments how the poor people don't do this obvious, smart thing, and how they're making it worse for themselves, like they're making a conscious decision to lower their quality of life. The problem is they're taking for granted the advantages they already have that make this no-brainer option so easy to take. Notably, buying bulk is cheaper long-term, but requires a larger up-front investment — bulk items are cheaper per-item but cost more up-front, plus stores that specialise in bulk items like Costco have membership fees — that just doesn't exist for someone that's barely making enough money to survive. You have to eat but can't afford the bulk item, so you waste money buying smaller portions, which makes it harder to save enough to buy bulk, continuing the cycle.
Anyway, not trying to argue or anything, just wanted to provide a counter to the vaguely negative "they're doing this to themselves" tone of your job market lamentation. Like I said, I don't think you were trying to be that way with what you wrote, but it's easy for assumptions to creep in and taint attempts at considering other perspectives.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 20 2018, @01:40PM
Bingo. People replying here are thinking like upperclass, not like working class. I see lots and lots of idle teens who are economically lower-class, and largely hanging around the very fast food joints that are begging for employees . Why are these teens not out there hustling for jobs that clearly are right underfoot? Transportation obviously is not the issue; they're already on the spot.
A: between mama's basement and mama's welfare payments, they don't need to, and besides they can make more money growing and selling pot.
And most of the middle-class kids now have fantasies about getting rich after they get their PhD in Useless Studies (which will be paid for by student loans, not by savings from summer jobs), and meanwhile wouldn't be caught dead doing blue-collar grunt work, nor would their parents allow such ignominious labor.
In short, way too many teens now think taking a starter job is beneath them, or are into the drug economy and aren't reliable enough anyway. Hell, half the time these kids can't show up for school; what makes you think they'd show up any more often as an employee?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.