The U.S. Department of Labor says nearly half of all 12-year-olds in the country have some employment experience, but right from the start, boys and girls go into different lines of work. The information comes from the department’s just issued “Report on the Youth Labor Force.”
The report provides a detailed, overall look at youth labor in the United States, including regulations on child labor, current work experience of youth and how it has changed over time and the outcomes of this experience.
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”The American work ethic starts at an early age,” Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman said. “For the first time we have data on the work patterns of those as young as 12. Half of twelve-year-olds do babysitting or lawn work, and the numbers go up from there: 57 percent of 14-year-olds and 64 percent of 15-year-olds have jobs. For the most part, these are informal jobs that don’t interfere with their school work.”
Herman hopes parents and teachers look closer at the choices girls and boys make for their first jobs.
“We want boys and girls to choose first jobs that are safe and legal and that lead to higher level skills, and eventually higher-paying jobs,” she said.
Last summer, Herman launched the “Safe Work/Safe Kids” initiative, using education, enforcement, partnership and public awareness strategies to help teens find opportunities that provide the rewards of early work experiences , while ensuring the work is positive and safe.
The data about 12-to-16-year-olds comes from a study that included detailed interviews with teens. The detailed interviews, the department said, were able to identify more informal jobs than traditional surveys, such as the Current Populations Survey, which is used to gather data on everyone in the household. The CPS finds that just over one-third of all teens ages 15 to 17 have jobs.
The report provides this snapshot of young workers:
At 12, girls baby-sit and boys do yardwork; at 14 they are both in food service and entertainment, but boys are cooks and cleaners while girls are waitresses and cashiers.
From ages 12 to 15, both boys and girls move from freelance to employee jobs, both during the school year and in the summer; however, 14 and 15-year-old males are more likely than females to have employee jobs.
15 to 17-year-old employees worked an average of 17 hours a week during the school months and 23 hours during the summer; boys work more hours than girls.
A large proportion of employed youth earn more than the minimum wage; in 1998 the median wage of 15-17-year-olds was $5.57 an hour.
White youths are more likely to have jobs than black or Hispanic youths; teens from two-parent households are more likely to have jobs than those from single-parent households; and teens from middle-class families are more likely to have jobs than those from poor families.
Businesses seem to be doing a better job of complying with child labor laws: The total number of investigations in which the Labor Department found child labor violations decreased from a high of 5,889 in 1990 to 1,273 in 1998.
Teens may be working safer: Lost workday injuries among youth declined 49 percent between 1992 and 1997.
Job-related fatalities among young workers occur disproportionately in family businesses and agriculture.
From 1979-1998, the proportion of youths holding a job and their hours of work have declined.
A growing number of farm workers are male teens who are “de facto” emancipated minors, living and working on their own away from their families; they are falling behind academically.
Teens who work may fare better later: There is some correlation’s between working in the teen years and employment success later, but this may be simply because of the characteristics of young workers.
