In November 2024, the number and percentage of younger teens with jobs in the U.S. fell to its lowest level since March 2021.
The number of U.S. teens Age 16 and 17 with jobs in the U.S. workforce declined to a seasonally-adjusted 1,927,000 in November 2024, some 280,000 below the 2,207,000 young teens recorded with jobs six months earlier. Going back to January 2024, the number of Americans Age 16-17 with jobs has fallen by 365,000.
In percentage terms, from January 2024 to November 2024, the share of the Age 16-17 population in the U.S. with jobs has fallen from 24.6% to 20.7%. The U.S. economy has gone from providing work for one in every four young teens to providing jobs for a little over one in every five young teens.
The following pair of charts shows the trends for the seasonally-adjusted teen employment and the teen employment-to-population figures from January 2016 through November 2024.
These charts show that in the last few months, the number of older teens, Americans Age 18 to 19, have seen their seasonally adjusted numbers in the U.S. workforce increase. That raises a good question - are younger teens simply aging into this older demographic?
That's certainly happening, but focusing on that dynamic misses a big underlying change in the composition of the teen workforce. Younger teens with jobs who are aging out of the Age 16-17 group are not being replaced in the ranks of the employed by younger Americans who are aging into the Age 16-17 group. An increasing share of those newer teens joining the population of working age Americans have not been getting hired in 2024.
Since January 2024, the seasonally adjusted number of young teens with jobs has dropped by 16%. What do you call it when such a large percentage of a population finds itself without a money-paying job?
References
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Force Statistics (Current Population Survey - CPS). [Online Database]. Accessed: 6 December 2024.
Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a store sign that says 'NOW HIRING' and 'AGE 18+ ONLY'".
Labels: demographics, jobs
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