Wonderful photograph . Carney has worked hard and made a success of his life
Odd, I walk into local supermarkets and there is a mix of older and younger workers. There is no shortage of teens working summer jobs. I think what is really happening is there are fewer teens and more part time jobs than ever before.
"American kids don't want to work" is pretty much what I'm seeing among wealthy white people. And their parents aren't encouraging them to work. Early workplace experience in jobs such as these is critical and doesn't bode well for America's employers in the future.
I worked in a Mackinac Island fudge shop twenty-some years ago. Let me tell you what that was like: exploitative. Dangerous, even.
Waitresses made money, but sexual harassment was rampant in all service positions, both from customers and coworkers. We lived in company housing, four girls squashed in a tiny room, twenty of us, one kitchen, a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, a broken microwave that ran with the door half-open. Some girls working there were homeless, doing summer season at the Island and working ski resorts in winter, just trying to keep their cars running to get to a job. We had a few young foreign women among us, and they struggled in their limited English to explain the harassment they endured. A lot of crying in the bathrooms. We weren't allowed breaks when lines were out the door, we couldn't take lunch either.
I hung out with an older guy in the company, and found out later that his job was a cover for coke dealing to the rich folk with houses up on the bluffs. He borrowed thousands of dollars from the company accountant, and then absconded. There was a rash of rapes on the Island that summer, and I nearly got jumped one quiet evening on the Turkey Hill road. Thank God some random guy came along in time. I came home after two months with 200 bucks and a huge bicep from scooping ice cream six hours straight a day.
It was an edcuation but I'd never do it again. That place is skeevy. I never went back. No doubt the abuse is still happening.
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Sounds exactly like Cape Cod too.
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I know the Murdicks Fudge on Mackinac, in Charlevoix (same family but now privately owned), and on Martha's Vineyard. In fact, I first discovered this wonderful place in August 1966 while on my honeymoon!
Summer help is not just a problem for businesses in resort areas, but for young people as well. First of all, if their family does not live there, either as year 'round residents, or own/rent a house there for the summer, rent will be prohibitive, and few landlords will rent to a bunch of college students anyway (not the best of tenants!). Then add in the fact that the businesses want them at a minimum through Labor Day, and preferably through Columbus Day, and this becomes a deal-breaker. More and more colleges now open in mid-late August - the "after Labor Day" calendar is gone forever.
It really has very little to do with what is paid. When my children (now in their late 40's) were working on Martha's Vineyard, they were paid $6 an hr - I think the minimum wage was about $3 a hr, so they were very well paid. No business can afford to pay them enough to rent vacation rental properties. For many years, these summer jobs were filled by foreign young people who came over to work for 4-5 months. Now, few businesses can get permission to hire them.
So the problem is in fact, school calendars and lack of affordable housing. Neither is going to change.
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Sorry, all you guys with myriad reasons why American kids don't want summer vacation jobs. I'm still grateful for having the had the chance to work when I was just a kid with no skills.
In 1970 when I was 15, I walked into the Burger Flame restaurant on the corner of Dekalb and Tompkins in Brooklyn and asked Willie, the owner, for a summer job. He actually said yes, to some kid he had never seen before that day.
For two summers and the winter in between, Fridays and Saturdays only, I worked hard scooping Icees, and making and serving hundreds of pizzas by the slice (fifteen cents a slice!), as well as the usual fried foods.
Wilie always paid in cash, and that job put about $40.00 in folding money in my pocket each week. Maybe I wasn't rich, but I had enough to buy or save for pretty much anything I needed or wanted. My parents still fed me and put a roof over my head but with that job I could, and did, stop asking anyone for money.
That job gave me life lessons about dealing with all types of people, the rewards for hard work (both intrinsic and extrinsic), and the value of a dollar.
So, say what you will about unacceptable jobs, low wages, slave wages, foreigners or rapacious business owners:
work is work, and each has its own dignities and lessons for you. Do what you have to until you can do better.
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The federal minimum wage in 1970 was $1.60, so your $40 equaled 25 hours of minimum wage work. And since you worked an illegal off the books job, you were doing even better. You didn’t have any payroll and income tax deductions.
$40 in 1970 adjusted for inflation is $265 in 2018. Since the current federal minimum wage is $7.25, $265 equals 36.50 hours of such work nowadays - basically a full time job.
Plenty of teens and college students are still working low wage food jobs - often year round, sometimes full-time. This article is mostly about seasonal jobs in vacation locations. These areas have housing and food costs which make it unaffordable for poor Americans to move for temporary low wage work. And like the fudge maker in the article, many of these jobs require some skills. Even foreign migrants complain about substandard worker housing and how little they can save. Some migrants can end the season in debt due to recruiter/placement fees and summer rents. On Nantucket, some workers have resorted to sleeping on basement floors and inside old shipping containers.
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When I grow up I want to be a seasonal fudge maker said no one ever.
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It is true that fewer kids have summer jobs, but it also varies geographically. Places without tourism or farming don't OFFER summer jobs.
BUT don't let these poor, neglected seasonal employers snow you either. They advertise the jobs in one newspaper for the legally-required time, offering wages that are pathetic, and then cry "oh woe is me, I can't find ANY American workers - I need to import and exploit foreigners to be able to run my business!"
Try offering REAL wages for once, and more people might come knocking.
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Same thing here in Collier County Fla with regard to hiring seasonal workers.
One weekend listing of help wanted ad for working in the vegetable fields for piece work which shakes out to about $6.32 an hour.
Of course illegals end up with the jobs because no legal resident, black, white or brown will work under the existing conditions.
And so wages and work conditions don’t change.
Just more lip service & excuses from the agribusinesses here in COLLIER County. You know who they are.
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The conservatives scream free market is the best solution. But they never let the free market work. They always put their thumbs on the scale. Under the free market, wages should rise to a level where an American will take the jobs. If the pay makes the business not profitable, it should not exist. Bringing in foreign workers rigs the deck. It is bad for this country (money leaves) and bad for our workers who would get the jobs and for other workers who would get higher pay.
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Alan. I AM a conservative and I completely agree with you. So, hell must be about to freeze over.
If foreign student can work and live in these areas, a US student can do so too if we pay a little more. After all, these students have to fly in, which is not cheap. The longer season argument does not work too because foreign students have classes too. The real reason is these jobs are no longer resume builders. Thus, the rich families send their kids to internships and the poor families are located too far or are just not recruited for these jobs.
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Did you rad the article? It's not foreign "students" who are doing the jobs. It's foreign workers in their 20's and 30's.
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If Benser paid better wages (above poverty wage level), and refused to hire foreign temps as a show of patriotism, he would be an American to be admired. He is not.
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MI minimum wage puts a full-time worker above poverty level - it even puts a household of 2 above poverty level.
Thee seasonal tourism jobs in northern MIC pay FAR MORE than minimum wage - as in 30% to 200% more.
Go make up more nonsense.
And the 'unemployed' sitting in Detroit, Flint etc do NOT want to come up and work for 6 months. The same 'unemployed' - majority black cities - that the NYT was wailing a week or so would be victimized by racism against blacks if MI enacts a Medicaid work rule.
The federal poverty level has little connection to the cost of living and actual poverty. It’s $12,140 for one person. It’s $16,460 for a two person household. The minimum wage in Michigan is $9.25. If you worked 40 hours every week of the year, that would bring in $19,240. If seasonal jobs in Northern Michigan paid competitive wages, they wouldn’t be so heavily dependent on low wage temporary foreign workers.
The MI Medicaid work requirements were criticized because they exempted counties with high unemployment rates but not cities. The practical effect was that primarily white rural counties would be exempt from work requirements but not heavily black cities - since the cities are surrounded by wealthy suburbs with low unemployment that reduce the overall county unemployment rate. In addition to job training, the solution to urban unemployment often involves improving transportation options so the unemployed can reach good jobs in the suburbs.
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Perhaps jobs that cannot be filled without foreign workers are simply not worth doing at all.
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I agree. The underlying principle here is that our Immigration System should not be a puppet to greedy summer merchants who want to cut costs or extend their season.
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Are you both saying that tourist oriented businesses should close? The ice cream & fudge shops, the burger and fish & chips joints, Tee-shirt & souvenir shops should close? Those places are usually owned by locals.
Where will you eat and shop? Will you spend all your time at the beach or in the motel?
Many people in my area have 2 or 3 part-time minimum wage jobs. They are still living in or near poverty, and are one pay check from being homeless. BTW, many minimum wage jobs are part-time to avoid having to provide any benefits.
We are becoming a nation of rich, "I've got mine, I don't care about you." and the rest of us working like crazy to pay the rent and buy food.
You quote one employer saying the college students don't want the summer jobs anymore. As a professor, I believe that is because most college students are working close to full time jobs year round. They aren't going to quit those jobs to take seasonal employment. BTW, it's very bad for their academic efforts to be working such long hours. They learn a lot less, and they devote a lot less time to their studies, than they would if they working for pay 10 or 15 hours a week -- and it has essentially killed the joy in discovering new things that I remember from my undergrad days.
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Don’t forget about the high housing costs in these areas. Working class families are displaced by wealthy vacation home owners, so the local labor supply is limited. If you try building affordable housing in these areas, like Cape Cod or the Hamptons, you’ll be buried in NIMBY lawsuits. Why would any American relocate for a low wage seasonal job in an area where they can’t afford the rent. Even the barrack style housing available to some seasonal workers is expensive for what is effectively a homeless shelter.
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Have you been to Mackinac Island? There are no jobs there suitable to support a family or even an individual. Nobody lives there unless they are independently wealthy.
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If the issue is why American teenagers can’t find summer jobs (due to the competition with foreign workers), why was there so much focus on the art of fudge making? That seemed like more of a distraction from the “meat” of the article.
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To demonstrate that these jobs require skill. Too many articles about seasonal workers ignore the fact that everything from properly picking fruit to making fudge or cleaning crabs do in fact require unique skills that seasonal workers possess.
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My son had been swimming since a young child and was on a few swim teams growing up. His summer job was life guarding at a local pool or the summer. It paid fairly well, the work wasn't difficult. He went in an set up the chairs, cleaned the pool of leaves and basically worked shifts with the others just watching the people in the pool. He had the swimming skills but also had to pass a test from the Red Cross on first aid to qualify for the job. The work period was Memorial Day until Labor Day so there was no interference with school.
AH the oh-so-simplistic NYT readers...."just pay more"
Mackinac County has a year round population of year 11,113 including elderly & kids with 4500 of them in the workforce. During the summer, the number employed swells to over 6200. In the summer, the number of unemployed is 187 & in the winter it is over 1150 - 24.3% of the workforce .
The seasonal workers for the summer live in barracks & shared housing arranged by their employers - typically pay $75-125 a week for their housing.
The year-round residents have to make their money in the summer to get by in the winter on savings & unemployment. Nearly 14% are on Medicaid year-round which means they can not work full-time year round or they lose Medicaid due to income. MI minimum wage $9.25 & the seasonal jobs on Mackinac typically pay $15-20/hour.
Pay more? And watch the tourists who can afford the Grand Hotel rates of $720 -910 per night for a couple scream to high heaven,
Housing in Mackinac is cheap as compared to the other tourism counties to the south/SW of it that bring in workers from the Caribbean & Europe.
In my county the median priced house is $400,000+. There is NO WAY to "pay enough" for a service worker to live indoors year round here which would take $85,000 income to afford the cheapest house - rents are $1800/mo +utilities & there are only 12 subsidized apartments in the county.
Too bad the "unemployed" in Detroit, Flint etc do not want to come up & work for the summer.
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So we are supposed to allow the exploitation of foreign workers to maintain this impossible situation?? This is simple supply and demand, Ann, and the businesses are asking the government to give them - and ONLY them - a break.
We have had idiotically small inflation for SO long - aided immeasurably by off-shoring work to places paying slave wages and allowing the importation of virtual slaves to this country.
Pay what people deserve for work, and let the prices straighten out.
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“We can’t fill those jobs any way else,” yet an inner monologue of needs from the employers retails a gripe about availability or repeat season commitment that students can’t provide? It appears that the summer - student - help could be out there and wanting to work, but the shoppe side has a wish list precluding answering the youth workers’ wishes.
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Youth workers' wishes? This country has an over abundance of spoiled, entitled brats. Since when do kids tell the employer they will only work when they want to? If they don't get their way then they don't want to work?
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Spoiled, entitled brats?
Nope. The youth workers’ wishes being referred to are the wish to work during their short summer break. The article describes how a longer tourism season, longer school year, and additional student commitments have meant these food businesses have difficulty staffing low wage jobs with American teens and college students. The businesses instead want workers for an extended 6 month tourism season. Which is why they have turned to hiring foreign migrant workers and complain about a cap on such visas.
They have a business model built on disposable low wage workers. Benser’s housing manager wants foreign kids who “need the money” over Americans kids who “don’t want to work.” Their business strategy is clearly very profitable. The article states Benser owns several fudge stores, restaurants, and hotels, and is building a new boutique hotel.
Perhaps they should consider developing a larger long term workforce that is better paid and includes more older workers. Then add layers of short term workers on to that. If you want a stable supply of labor, you need to do the work. Instead, businesses want a bailout of low wage foreign workers every time the labor market tightens. American workers certainly don’t get job guarantees when a recession hits.
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"Kids today don't want to work!" grumped the old grump, standing on his snow covered stoop with a quarter, wondering why nobody would shovel it.
Pay more. Can't pay more? Innovate. Automate. Or die.
I understand that some small business owners are in a crunch. But that's capitalism. Creative destruction. Reinvention. Or does that only apply to workers?
Kids today face an incredibly adult competitive work environment. When I was a lad, plenty of future doctors, lawyers, and assorted business types spend their Hamptons summers scooping ice cream or packing fudge.
Nowadays, when kids face the binary "career" choice of 1. joining the 1 percent or 2. driving an Uber for the rest of their lives, spending the summer on a low wage job and going to the beach are luxuries they just can't afford. Real experience in an office is what they need, or think they need.
So clearly, these aren't "kids" jobs anymore.
Which means owners need to pay adult wages. Provide benefits. Flexible hours. Some won't be able to afford it. That's fine... others will take their place and capitalism moves on and on.
Or just hire cheap foreign workers. That seems to be capitalism's "get out of jail free" card when workers get too uppity.
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In Washington DC, all the pools are staffed by foreign workers. They do not even bother to recruit in this country. They bring them in by the busload and put them in dorms. The reason they are prefered over an American is because they are reliable (where would they go?) and can be counted on to work as many days as required. An American would want days off for his family vacation and does not want to work weekends which is where most of the demand lies. Plus, the pay is substantially less.
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I love the story about Hallie Jackson and her teenage job. Makes me admire her even more now that I know about her summer job.
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I own an inn on Martha’s Vineyard and have hired J1 visa workers/students, mainly from Serbia for years. Their school schedule is similar to our summer tourist season which now extends into November. We pay $15 an hour plus tips. This idea that they get paid minimum wage and that is the problem is laughable.
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$15 is probably the minimum wage for Martha's Vineyard. But obviously it is not enough to attract workers.
I have lived in an area similar to Matha's Vineyard, so I am familiar with the problem.
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J-1 visas are suppose to be for cultural and educational exchange. The foreign college students are suppose to be conversant in English and work in roles where they interact with Americans. But many hospitality businesses use them for low wage manual labor such as housekeeping, landscaping, dishwashing, and food preparation. The workers are locked into whatever job the program sponsor places them in.
And there are costs. The workers are responsible for their own housing and travel costs. Program sponsors charge the students placements fees, so they’re already in the negative when they arrive.
The workers have to pay state and federal income taxes. But since they’re exempt from Social Security and Medicare taxes, businesses don’t have to make the corresponding employer contribution, saving the employer 8% every time they hire a J-1 instead of an American. There is no requirement they search for an American worker before hiring the J-1.
After taxes, travel, living costs, and placement fees are deducted, it can be a bad deal for foreign students. Groups of foreign student who found themselves underpaid and exploited by employers have staged protests in Times Square and launched social media campaigns in recent years. The J-1 program is mired in controversy.
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When was the last time you lived on $15/hour?
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The solution is simple, increase wages to attract more workers. Difficulty to find people willing to work for minimum wage is a sign of the the strong economy.
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Welcome to capitalism Mr. Bob Benser Jr.
It's all a function of supply and demand. Raising the wages could be an option too.
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Housing prices are now inflated so this is not supply and demand, it’s a rigged economy for Wall Street and real estate.
Plenty of people want jobs, but can’t afford to live near them! That’s a big issue in much of America.
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So Ms. Tamalyn has interviewed EVERY American kid? Um okay..statements like this are SO unhelpful. When those immigrants stay, establish families and have children remember they will BE Americans not mini-wherever-their-parents are from. So I guess she won't be interested in hiring those lazy American kids. WOW!
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Working w/ one's tactile hands, performing practical Math (ex. ringing up sales, taxes, tips, making change, measuring ingredient proportions, tracking time, etc.), and expanding one's people skills beyond just your age group, family, & faculty by working w/ adults & dealing w/ tourists of all ages/shades/tongues/etc. has way more value than just looking at screens, books, experiments, and case studies!
Colleges and universities that snub hands-on, ground floor, paid work experience are fools that are only setting themselves up to have a bunch of naive snowflakes who have no genuine insightful empathy for workers & consumers.
Running resiliently successful and responsive businesses & other real world entities (ex. non-profits, govt. agencies) take more than just the latest algorithm or management buzzwords.
It takes having credible, lifetime insights from being on the frontlines, so to speak.
Even successful older CEOs do their "Undercover Bosses" work as needed instead of hiring mystery shoppers or planted workers to gauge how a firm can improve.
Why not have late teens & early adults get real work experience plus tuition cash, instead of drowining them in debt for out-of-touch/sheltered/elitist snob college curricula?
Signed: a university degree-holding entrepreneur & military veteran who sold trendy, hand-made ready-to-wear business & casual clothes part-time, while attending college full-time, in the 1990s;)
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Great photo.... that’s how you sell an article.
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What a GREAT photo Emily Rose Bennett!!!!!!!
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So important that the NYT is uncovering the real story about all those immigrants, stealing steaming hot seasonal kitchen jobs that nobody wants. Thank heavens the republicans are trying to save these minimum wage jobs for the people who think the work is beneath them.
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Okay, Democrats want to increase the minimum wage to $12-15 because the current rate is too low. Yet you seem to be endorsing a very low minimum wage and the surplus of low quality jobs it enables while bashing Republicans.
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I don’t know what this author and writer are talking about. I am the mother of a 17-year-old boy in Los Angeles. He and his friends are having the toughest time ever finding summer jobs. His girlfriend, a lovely, smart honor student has applied to over 20 places....retail and fast food. Nothing. She is being told they have hundreds of applications and some of them actually asked for resumes! All of these kids want to work but it’s not like when I was a teenager that’s for sure. Walk into a Macy’s now and it’s mostly grannies waiting on people. Not like when I was in high school and college. Years ago those were jobs for teens and young adults. And by the way, how can someone not find kids to work in a FUDGE shop? Most kids wouldn’t work there for free.
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These jobs probably need to be more than minimum wage. You shouldn't have to hire foreign workers if you pay well enough. And as for teens, well, they're doing what they need to do to please college admissions offices, in a very crowded "marketplace", and sadly, a summer job unrelated to one's intended major is not seen as attractive enough.
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As a parent who has recently helped a student get through the college process I strongly disagree with your assertion about summer jobs. Dozens of college reps, tour guides and advisors told us that adcoms valued paid work - be it dog walking, baby sitting, bagging groceries, tutoring, life guarding, camp counseling, scooping fries or ice cream or folding jeans at the GAP - very very highly. Adcoms see through the privilege of "internships" and foreign service trips for what they often are, and they respect students who show commitment and responsibility by holding onto jobs.
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On Mackinac Island, the workers have to be college-age, as they live there during the summer. Many of the jobs pay more than minimum (and provide room and board); some tipping jobs pay quite well, and they seem to be filled with American kids. Jobs like housekeeper, which used to be female college students, are all foreign workers now.
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What colleges want is lots of applications, so they can be rated as more selective when they reject more of the applicants.
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We visited Maine for years, near Acadia National Park. Employers in the towns were desperate for people to work. H2B workers were usually dependable, serious employees, in contrast to locals (so we were told by various employers). Too bad that this administration has cut the number of H2B visas. It’s going to be a hard summer without enough workers.
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When I was a teen in the late '60s, summer jobs were exceedingly hard to find - just too many kids around looking for one. Plus, there were not so many shops in need of workers, partly because my parents' generation felt that if you wanted fudge, for instance, you got out the cookbook and made it at home. Still a good idea (no matter how ancient-sounding).
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@ Hippo DS
The sentence in the article that impressed me most is "... spinning cotton candy and tossing churros in sugar at Sea World. To this day, she won’t eat either of them". I fully understand that woman, and I have never been attracted to gooey, chewey, toffe-like sweets.
6
They're making fudge to sell to tourists, not just for some local wanting a treat. That you make yourself. If you visit someplace famous for their fudge, you're going to buy some (or not) but you won't be making it.
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If only there were a good market solution to the problem of attracting more workers! What could it possibly be? Raise wages? No, that can't possibly be it.
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