It can be easy to deceive young people looking for a job. They might not be aware of their rights, what salary they should be getting, or what labor laws protect them. So, it’s no surprise that some employers might take advantage and profit from this by offering a very small salary or no pay at all. Luckily, some teenagers have parents who look out for them.
Like the father in this story, who cautioned his 15-year-old daughter about the job she applied for. While it looked fancy and enticing on paper, the application process and the working conditions turned out to be ridiculous and exploitative. Furious that employers have the gall to do this, he decided to share this story with others on the Internet.
Table of Contents
Parents should teach kids to know their worth so that they never get exploited by an employer
This father sensed something was fishy with his 15 Y.O.’s potential job and took action
The father later gave more context and clarified his calculations
More and more teenagers are starting to work in recent years, but with that has come child labor violations
Teenagers working is neither an outrageous nor a novel idea. According to the Department of Labor statistics, 250,000 more teenagers (16-19-year-olds) were working in 2023 compared to before the pandemic. This is the highest annual rate since 2009, experts say.
However, this surge also comes with a boost in child labor violations, and most of them come from the fast-food sector. The Washington Post’s analysis of federal data showed that McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, and Sonic are the biggest offenders.
The Labor Department found around 13,000 violations in total in the food industry. A spokesperson also said that this data doesn’t accurately reflect “a comprehensive picture,” and the number of violations could be significantly higher.
Almost 75% of the violations were 14- and 15-year-olds working long hours. Others include making teens do hazardous work or tasks that are not in their job descriptions. Some restaurants failed to keep track of child records, including date of birth and parental permission.
Experts say that, endangering teens aside, ignoring the labor laws teaches young people that exploiting workers is okay. “These laws are not simply arbitrary,” David Weil, a professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, told The Post.
“They’re built around the fact that, as a society, we want children first and foremost to get educated so that they can live a life where they have the skills and training to have good jobs.”
Teenagers have become an important part of the workforce
Millennials were the generation where the number of teenagers in the workforce plummeted. In previous generations, around 35% to 50% of the teenage population used to work. The curve has moved significantly downward since the early 2000s and is now starting to rise again.
Why are more and more teenagers working today? Elizabeth Ananat, an economics professor at Barnard College, told The Washington Post that the reason is simple. “When the labor market is tight, more teens work. When teens hear there are jobs available, they take the jobs.”
In recent years, inflation has been an important factor. Teens feel the need to support their families by helping out with paying rent and utilities. Those who come from more well-off families cite financial independence as the primary reason for working. They say they want to pay for gas and car insurance, as well as outings with friends.
Many of the places where teens work today are the typical retail stores, restaurants, and movie theaters. And Abha Bhattarai, an economics correspondent at The Washington Post, told Marketplace that teenagers helped keep the service sector going these last couple of years.
“Restaurant owner after restaurant owner told me that if it wasn’t for the high schoolers that are working after school or during the summers, they just would have had to shut down by now,” she recalled. “And so they’ve really kept the economy going in a big way. And they’ve allowed service employers to keep hiring.”
