The earliest data for 2026's summer jobs season came in trending downward for U.S. teens.

Overall, a seasonally-adjusted 5,350,000 Americans Age 16 through 19 were counted as having jobs in May 2026, falling 29,000 from April 2026's total.

Breaking down the jobs numbers between younger teens (Age 16-17) and older teens (Age 18-19) finds a split in how each group is faring going into summer. Younger teens saw their seasonally-adjusted numbers plunge by 79,000 to 1,850,000, while older teens saw their numbers rise by 14,000 to 3,510,000.

The following chart shows these changes along with the seasonally-adjusted total Age 16-19 employment level:

Sharp-eyed readers will recognize the number of employed Age 16-17 teens and Age 18-19 teens does not add up to the combined Age 16-19 figure. That's because each demographic gets its own seasonal adjustment. If you want numbers that do add up within a small margin of error, you'll want to access the BLS' raw, non-seasonally adjusted employment figures.

We did that and found something pretty remarkable. Here's how the numbers changed from April to May 2026 for both younger and older teens:

• Younger teens (Age 16-17): Decrease of 27,000 to 1,744,000.
• Older teens (Age 18-19): Increase of 107,000 to 3,528,000.

At this time of year, the BLS' seasonal adjustment is designed to account for the summer surge in teen employment levels. The seasonally adjusted data shows employers hiring older teens at rates similar to slightly higher than what they have in recent years. But the data also shows employers are not hiring anywhere near as many younger teens as would be expected from the summer seasonal pattern for this age group.

Media reports have noted that the summer job season for teens is among the toughest on record, but have missed this vital difference. The following excerpt from one of the reports tries to explain why that is:

Challenger, Gray & Christmas suspect that AI and automation, older workers staying in jobs longer, and overall economic uncertainty due to things like inflation and oil prices could be culprits.

The rise of AI means some entry-level jobs are being replaced. Some people are even getting more comfortable with AI customer service agents....

But it’s not just AI that teens have to compete with. Older workers are often competing for the same part-time or seasonal rules as teens. Adults, though, have more experience and more time availability throughout the year. According to a report from the Society for Human Resource Management, on average, nearly one in five people ages 65 and older participated in the labor force as of April 2025.

To top it all off, persistent inflation and high oil prices are making costs higher for restaurants and retailers — places that you teens might typically get a summer job — leaving less room in the budget for summer hires.

Let's take Challenger, Gray & Christmas' thinking apart. If AI were the culprit, it would be affecting jobs for all teens, not just those affecting younger teens.

Ditto for job competition from "geezers" (aka "Americans Age 65 or older). While older teens might have more job experience than younger teens, they would still be at a great competitive disadvantage if geezers were coming for teen job, lacking the education, experience, and long lifetime accumulation of skills and training that this demographic has.

That leaves the "inflation and high oil prices" explanation as the only one of Challenger, Gray & Christmas' hypotheses that would have any impact on the employers who might otherwise seek to hire younger teens.

For all practical purposes, these factors should also negatively affect the hiring of older teens, but that's where the small advantage this demographic has over their less educated, less experienced, and less skilled competition comes into play. We think it's much more likely employers are favoring older teens over younger ones for the jobs they have available, which is why older teens are doing better than younger teens in getting jobs so far this summer.

Will that dynamic continue as summer hiring fully ramps up? Only time and new data will tell, and unlike Challenger, Gray & Christmas, we drill down into the teen jobs numbers far enough to rule out hypotheses that don't hold water.

We'll even do it for our own hypotheses. We don't get to do it often, but our favorite way to start an article is with the words "we were wrong". You'll just need to keep tuning in to see if and when we do!...

Reference

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Force Statistics (Current Population Survey - CPS). [Online Database]. Accessed: 5 June 2026.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a high school student who is having trouble finding a job". We tweaked the image so the Help Wanted sign indicates 'MUST BE 18 OR OLDER'. With the jobs number for younger teens being similar to May 2025's figures, we're re-using our cartoon from that month since it's on point.