Skip to content
Connect
Stories

‘You can’t do anything but keep searching’: Despite hiring push, summer jobs can still feel hard to come by

People in this story

Boston Globe, June 2021

Wendy Issokson, owner of the Chill on Park ice cream shop in the Fields Corner section of Dorchester, is struggling to find full-time workers. Yet Alicia Cruz, a 19-year-old from East Boston, can’t find a job. She has worked in restaurants and stores for years, and used to get hired “basically on the spot.” Not this year. “It’s like, ‘Wow, nobody wants to hire me,’ ” Cruz said. “You want to have money in your pocket but you can’t do anything but keep searching.”

As Boston’s economy revs up in this post-COVID-19 summer, there’s a disconnect in the labor market that’s frustrating economists and workers alike. Stores and restaurants are staffing up en masse, which should make it a good time for job growth. Employers say they’re eager to hire. Yet for teens who are looking for work right now, it can still be a difficult and messy process. On paper, are many positive indicators for teen job-hunters. More than 33 percent of teens ages 16 to 19 were employed last month — the highest percentage since 2008, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after years of that number trending downward. And the share of teens who say they want work and can’t find it is falling.

But those broad national numbers can mask a lot of nuance, said Alicia Sasser Modestino, an economist at Northeastern University, who noted that Black and Hispanic teens, for instance, tend to have more limited job access.

Continue reading at the Boston Globe.

More Stories

Picture of Dasani water bottles.

Gov. Healey to sign order banning single-use plastic bottles for state agencies

09.21.2023
Co-founder Andrew Song of solar geoengineering startup Make Sunsets holds a weather balloon filled with helium, air and sulfur dioxide at a park in Reno, Nevada, United States on February 12, 2023.

Some Politicians Want to Research Geoengineering as a Climate Solution. Scientists Are Worried

09.18.2023
Plastics and other trash littered a salt marsh in Chelsea in April.

Massachusetts lags on banning plastics

09.25.23
Op-eds