The tale of many a modern-day Horatio Alger begins with a childhood paper route or some other type of gainful employment through the teenage years. Many adults credit the self-discipline and good work habits inculcated by summer jobs with playing an important role in their later success. But teenage employment has become the exception rather than the rule in recent years, and some experts warn this trend has important implications for employers.

Fewer than four in 10 teenagers nationwide held paying jobs last summer, a decline of almost 11% since the peak of an economic boom in 1989, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over roughly the same period of time, the percentage of U.S. newspaper carriers who are teens has plunged from 70% to less than 20%. So are today’s young people simply lazier and more distracted than teenagers of generations past, or are there other factors at play?

Despite iPods, cell phones, MySpace pages and the other trappings of 24/7, always-on connectivity, today’s teens are no less ambitious, as a group, than those of years past, according to Andrew Sum, Director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. While many want to work, teens have found it increasingly difficult to find summer employment in recent years, and the Center’s research has identified a number of factors behind that trend:

• Teens were harder-hit than any other demographic group by the recession of 2001 and have not benefited to a substantive degree from the national jobs recovery that began in the fall of 2003.
• Many of the jobs that have traditionally gone to teens are now going to immigrants and retirement-age workers seeking to supplement their incomes.
• There has been increased competition for summer jobs from older college students and recent college graduates unable to find employment in their field.
• There has been a marked decrease in the number of subsidized jobs made available for low-income youth over the past few years.

These developments should be a source of concern to all employers, Sum and his colleagues argue. The work experience teens gain from summer jobs and part-time employment “can be an important form of human capital investment, helping build non-cognitive skills, soft skills, as well as occupational skills on the job that will improve their future employability,” according to a recent report prepared by CLMS researchers for Jobs for America’s Graduates, a not-for-profit school-to-career program.

An October 2006 study that surveyed more than 400 U.S. executives and human resources professionals concluded that the skills gap resulting from declining employment among teens represents a serious threat to the country’s ability to continue to compete in a global economy. The report, collaboratively sponsored by The Conference Board and three other research organizations, urges business leaders to play a prominent role in creating employment opportunities for young people.