The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the seasonally adjusted number of employed Americans Age 16-19 fell by 37,000 to 5,313,000 in June 2026. At the same time, the BLS also reports the number of employed Americans Age 16 or older dropped by 507,000 to 162,265,000.
Drilling down into the employed teen job numbers, younger teens (Age 16-17) saw their seasonally adjusted numbers increase by 6,000 to 1,856,000. That gain was more than offset by the decline in older teens (Age 18-19) that had 46,000 fewer counted as being employed during the month.
Now, here's the thing. Each of these data series gets its own seasonal adjustment. When you look at the non-seasonally adjusted numbers, both younger and older teens saw big gains. The raw number of 16 to 17-year-olds with jobs rose 352,000 up to 2,096,000, while the number of employed 18 to 19-year-olds increased 416,000 to 3,944,000. Altogether, the non-seasonally adjusted number of working teens grew by 769,000 to 6,040,000 in June 2026.
So why is the seasonally adjusted numbers showing such a modest gain for younger teens and a drop for older teens and all teens as a whole? In short, it's because the 2026 summer jobs season is falling far short in putting teens into jobs. At least, with respect to the number of working teens that the BLS' seasonal adjustment projects should have been filled in this first month of Summer 2026 if it is valid.
The following pair of charts shows the seasonally adjusted employment numbers and employment-to-population percentages for younger teens (Age 16-17), older teens (Age 18-19) and the combined population of working teens (Age 16-19) from January 2021 through June 2026.
As always, 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 stick with the BLS' raw, non-seasonally adjusted employment figures.
For May 2026's teen jobs numbers, we observed that the number of younger teens trending down but the number of older teens was holding steady, indicating employers are favoring older teens over hiring younger teens. June 2026's numbers suggest that's not necessarily the case, with the number of older teens now catching down to a lower level.
Meanwhile, there's evidence the BLS is falling short in collecting as much survey data as needed to have strong confidence in its jobs estimates. We'll see if that's a monthly fluke in the data or if the data they are collecting represents a valid trend in the months ahead.
Reference
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Force Statistics (Current Population Survey - CPS). [Online Database]. Accessed: 2 July 2026.
Image credit: Help Wanted sign by Egan Snow on Flickr. Creative Commons Creative Commons - CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Labels: jobs
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