It's summertime again and high school and college students have streamed to their local movie theaters, fast food restaurants and amusement parks seeking not just entertainment but also summer jobs.
But many will be disappointed, said Patricia Hayduk, an outreach worker for Rocky Point's North Shore Youth Council.
Hayduk said she has seen a steady stream of frustrated, unemployed teens stopping by her office in recent weeks unable to find work. "Kids will have gone to 11 different locations," she said. "They are not getting hired."
Nationwide, the past few years have been some of the toughest in decades for young summer job-seekers, and 2005 is not likely to get much better, according to a study by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies. Despite a strengthening economy and an improving employment market, only 36.7 percent of young people between the ages of 16 and 19 are expected to find work this summer, down from 45 percent in 2000, the study found.
At the local level, the situation is less clear because of a lack of reliable data. Last summer, in New York City, only 17.8 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds found employment compared with 36.5 percent for the state as a whole, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But youth on Long Island have long benefited from the summer tourist flows, which drive demand for seasonal workers.
Companies such as Splish Splash, a water park in Riverhead, hire more than 1,000 summer employees annually to fill positions ranging from lifeguard to food server. Most of those who applied for positions this year were hired, said Bob Amoruso, the park's general manager.
The problem is that many summer positions in Long Island are concentrated on the East End, while young people, many without access to a car, are concentrated in the west, say local labor experts.
"Most youth look for a job in their own neighborhood, whether it be at bowling alleys or supermarkets," said James Brown, labor market researcher for New York State's Department of Labor. "Their decision to get a job will be greatly controlled by their ability to get to it."
As a result, young people end up competing for scarce positions close to home, approaching employers who are not necessarily searching for short-term help.
"Not many people want to hire just for the summer," said 21-year-old Nicole Costello, who is home from college and looking for a summer office position.
Young job seekers are also competing with older applicants, said Joseph McLaughlin, a co-author of Northeastern's report. Immigrants and aging baby-boomers, particularly women, are increasingly filling positions in food service and retail, economic sectors once dominated by teens.
At the same time, the weak labor market of recent years has found many 20-year-olds taking jobs that used to be filled by high school students.
"What we believe is that teens are being squeezed out of the employment market," McLaughlin said. "You have immigrants and older workers out there who can work year-round and are probably more reliable than teens."
Hampton Inn in Brookhaven used to employ high school-age students at its front desk, said Rolando Perez, the hotel's director of sales. But recently the company made it a policy that all employees must be able to drive the hotel van, which required that the minimum age for employment be raised to 18.
Now, Perez said, the front desk is staffed by people of college age and older.
Further aggravating the situation for youth has been a dramatic reduction in government funding for summer work programs since the late 1990s. Nassau County's Job Development Center used to receive $200,000 annually from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to support a program that employed 125 low-income 17- to 21-year-olds each summer. But, in 1999, the funding ended and, although the program was restarted in 2003, the amount of annual government support was reduced to $25,000, said Daniel Russell, director of the job development center.
Recently, Brookhaven hosted a summer job fair featuring 40 local companies in an effort to match high school and college students with jobs. More than 200 job seekers attended, including Wendy Chan, 17, of Medford, who recently graduated from high school. Chan said she was working part time at a local animal hospital but needed an additional summer job to pay for college tuition.
"I just need to wait for a spot," she said. "But, you know, I kind of need a job now."
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