American organizations hire more and more adolescents for seasonal work in the US service sector. With the help of young people, business compensates for a foreign labor deficit caused by Coronavirus, writes The New York Times.
The problem of the lack of labor aggravated in the US in a pandemic, when the flow of workers from abroad, which usually worked in agriculture, occupied seasonal vacancies, almost stopped. American entrepreneurs began to look for workers among the local population.
The most fortunate age group in hiring for seasonal work as operators in the amusement parks, waiters in bars and other positions in the spring of 2021 were adolescents, reports the Statistical Bureau of Working force in the United States (Bureau of Labor Statistics). The share of working young people from 16 to 19 years amounted to 32.8 percent of the total number of American adolescents of this age – the maximum value since 2008 (when 34 percent of working adolescents were recorded). In April, about 256 thousand young people settled on earnings.
For employers, adolescents have become an important source of new labor, while many adult Americans cannot occupy similar vacancies due to health problems. In addition, workers with experience sometimes refuse to search for earnings and fully rely on unemployment payments.
Economist Northeast University Alicia Sasser Modestino believes that the period of restoration of the US economy from coronacrisis provides American adolescent unprecedented employment opportunities. Graduates of high school thanks to summer employment, for example, can earn money on the car.
Some school teachers fear that the work will affect the performance of students. Economic studies show that the prospects for rapid employment can also change the plans of the younger generation to study in colleges and universities, which will affect their income in the long run.
Under the threat of a shortage of migrants as a cheap labor force in the main sectors of the economy, the countries of Europe, Russia were also found. The Kremlin admits that to restore the welfare of the country and increasing the level of GDP, only migrant workers is not enough. The head of the Federal Penitentiary Service Alexander Kalashnikov proposed to attract prisoners to the construction sites, as they did in Soviet times.