Why Teens Should Get A Summer Job

Fewer teens are working, and that's too bad. What I learned at the soda-bottling plant.

For much of my childhood, I assumed I was going to play for the New York Mets when I grew up. Reality bit hard when I reached high school and was cut from the varsity baseball team.

As delusional as I might have been, I was perceptive enough to recognize that if I couldn't make the Guilderland High School varsity, my prospects for signing with the Mets were dim.

Lacking a career Plan B, I took a summer job at a small soda-bottling plant in downtown Albany. My sole qualification for the position was that my father knew the plant's owner from his bridge game.

Bottling soda on a conveyor belt in Louisville.
(Photo: Luke Sharrett, Bloomberg)

I thought back to that soda plant last week, when the Pew Research Center put out a report titled "the fading of the teen summer job." Back in the summer of 1978, the report found, 58% of 16- to 19-year-olds were employed. By last year, the teen summer employment rate had dropped to 32%.

The report offered a variety of possible explanations for the trend: fewer entry-level positions available; shorter summer breaks; more students enrolled in summer classes; and more teens taking unpaid internships or doing community service work.

Whatever the reasons, the decline of what Pew called the "Great American Summer Job" is a shame. My soda-plant job was grimy, unglamorous and low paying — and it taught me more about life and work than anything else I could have done during those three months.

To begin with, I learned about the monotony of repetitive work. One of my duties involved inspecting returnable bottles as they emerged from a washer and passed under a fluorescent light before they were refilled. My job was to grab any that were cracked or contaminated.

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