How has the employment situation for U.S. teens changed since November 2022?
We've asked this question because we're playing a game of catch up in looking at teen employment trends since we last checked in with them. To start, we need to first look at how November 2022's jobs data for teens has been revised. Here is a quick summary for that month's seasonally-adjusted initial employment estimates for teens Age 16-17, Age 18-19, and the combined Age 16-19 groups, along with the revised estimates for each group:
| Seasonally-Adjusted Teen Employment Data for November 2022 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Age Group | Age 16-17 | Age 18-19 | Age 16-19 |
| Initial Estimate (Dec-2022) | 2,232,000 | 3,504,000 | 5,741,000 |
| Current Estimate (May-2023) | 2,241,000 | 3,500,000 | 5,740,000 |
| Change | +9,000 | -4,000 | -1,000 |
Unlike non-seasonally adjusted data, the indicated figures listed in this table for the Age 16-17 group to those for the Age 18-19 group does not perfectly add up to the data for the combined Age 16-19 population. That is because the data for each of these demographic groupings has been subjected to its own seasonal adjustment by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Now, the real catch up begins! The following chart presents the monthly estimates for teen employment from November 2022 through the just-released initial estimate for April 2023:
The chart captures three overall trends for teen employment:
- After initially dipping in December 2022, total teen employment (Age 16-19) has increased, rising by nearly 1.0% from November 2022.
- That overall pattern has been driven by older teens (Age 18-19), which rose by almost 2.7% from November 2022's level.
- Younger teens (Age 16-17) experienced the opposite pattern, seeing an increase in December 2022 before falling off in the months since by 1.4% from November 2022's total.
The final chart puts this data into a longer term perspective, running from January 2016 through April 2023:
Here, we find the trends for overall teen employment and older teen employment has been rising since the coronavirus pandemic recession. Employment for younger teens also rose during much of this period, but has been growing much more slowly than it has for older teens since February 2022. Older teens and younger teens have experienced different employment trends over the past 14 months.
Reference
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Force Statistics (Current Population Survey - CPS). [Online Database.] Accessed: 5 May 2023.
Image credit: Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash.