Teen Summer Jobs Hit a 1948 Low as Adults Take Over

Employers will add just 790,000 teen jobs this summer, the fewest since the government began tracking the data in 1948, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago based outplacement firm whose new forecast points to the lowest pace on record. That is down from 801,000 last year, itself a record low reached without a recession.

The slide traces back to 1978. The jobs teenagers used to hold did not disappear. Adults took them.

The Weakest Summer Since Truman Was President

Harry Truman occupied the White House the last time teen summer hiring ran this slow. “Last summer was the weakest summer for teen hiring we have ever recorded,” said Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in a statement released with the forecast.

“What is striking is that it happened without a recession,” he added. “Inflation and rising fuel costs are squeezing the same households and small businesses that hire teens, such as amusement parks, restaurants, retailers and summer camps.”

Entertainment and leisure hiring took the hardest hit. “The collapse in Entertainment and Leisure hiring announcements is one of the clearest signals we have for the summer,” Challenger said. “Theme parks, resorts, hotels, and event operators are signaling they’ll run leaner this year.” That is exactly the seasonal work teens have always leaned on.

From 62% Participation to 30% in Two Generations

The 2026 forecast extends a decline that has run almost entirely downhill since the late 1970s.

Between 1948 and 1978, teens averaged 62% labor force participation each summer, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Roughly three in five teenagers were working or looking for work every June, July and August of the postwar decades.

The annual rate peaked at just over 58% in the fall of 1978, then began falling and never recovered. By February 2000 it had slipped to 52.2%. It cratered to 36.2% by February 2020, the last full month before the pandemic, according to a University of Wisconsin Extension analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Today it hovers near 30 percent.

Nothing in the new forecast breaks that curve. It is a continuation of a line that started before most of today’s working parents were born.

Adults Took the Jobs Teens Used to Hold

Fast food and retail work built its reputation on teenagers. The data behind that reputation has shifted underneath it.

“The image of fast food as being a job for teenagers is long gone,” said Rosemary Batt, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Her national data puts the average fast-food worker’s age at 24. The median age across all restaurant workers climbed to 29 by 2017.

Teens made up just 17.8% of the restaurant workforce before the pandemic, a sharp drop from decades earlier, Batt’s research shows. “Fast food has always relied on the lowest possible cost of service,” she said. Chains once paid teens less on the assumption they were earning what Batt calls ‘pin money,’ supplemental income rather than rent. Now the same registers are staffed by adults who need the paycheck to cover both.

Why Are Employers Trimming Their Teen Rosters?

Cost pressure, automation, adult competition and packed teen schedules are combining to shrink seasonal hiring at the same time, based on Challenger’s own analysis and separate labor market research. No single force explains the drop on its own. Together they have pushed summer teen hiring below one million for a second straight year.

• Cost pressure: inflation and higher fuel prices are squeezing the same households and small businesses that traditionally hire teens, from amusement parks to summer camps.
• Automation: self-checkout kiosks and ordering screens now cover the entry-level tasks that used to open the door for a first-time worker. Investors are chasing the same shift at a larger scale: UK robotics startup Humanoid raised its valuation to $1.35 billion with a wheeled robot bet this month.
• Adult competition: entry-level jobs once reserved for teenagers increasingly go to adults supporting families, part of why the median restaurant worker’s age has climbed to 29.
• Competing priorities: “Today’s 16- to 19-year-olds are balancing AP coursework, caretaking for their families, club sports that run year-round, summer enrichment programs, paid internships,” Challenger said.

Each factor alone might dent hiring. Combined, they have produced the weakest two summers on record back to back.

The EU’s Youth Unemployment Rate Reaches 15.2%

American teens are not working less because jobs vanished. Many are choosing school, sports or a side hustle over a cash register. Young Europeans face a different problem: not enough jobs exist for those who want one.

The youth unemployment rate reached 15.2% in May 2026 across the European Union, up slightly from April, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency. The euro area rate stood at 14.7%. Roughly 2.9 million people under 25 were unemployed across the EU that month.

Overall EU unemployment held at 5.9% in May, with 13.2 million people out of work across the bloc. The youth rate runs more than two and a half times higher than the general rate, a gap that has defined European labor markets for over a decade.

What Employers Lose When the First Job Disappears

A summer job has always taught basics no classroom covers: showing up on time, handling a rude customer, splitting a paycheck between spending and saving. Fewer teens are learning those lessons at 16, which means employers hiring at 22 may meet more first-timers than they expect.

Some of what looks like a loss is really a shift. Teens skipping the register are not idle. Many are earning through content creation, tutoring, resale and small digital services, building experience with customers, pricing and follow-through that looks nothing like a cash register shift.

The numbers behind the shift, side by side:

• 790,000: projected teen jobs for summer 2026, the lowest since 1948.
• 1.3 million: the average teens gained each summer from 2013 through 2025.
• 24: the average age of a fast-food worker today, per Cornell researcher Rosemary Batt.
• 15.2%: the EU youth unemployment rate as of May 2026.

Founders who still want young talent are changing how they recruit rather than waiting for applicants to appear. Paid internships, transparent pay and flexible scheduling now do the work a help wanted sign used to do on its own.

Only about three in ten American teenagers held or looked for a job this summer. In the late 1970s, six in ten did.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did the 2020 pandemic push teen labor force participation even lower than 2026’s projection?

Yes, but on a different measure. Monthly teen labor force participation bottomed at 30.7% in April 2020, according to a University of Wisconsin Extension analysis of BLS data, a sharper single-month drop than the current slide. The 2026 figure measures actual summer jobs gained rather than the share of teens in the labor force, so the two numbers are not directly comparable.

Which European countries have the toughest youth job markets right now?

Romania and Sweden report the EU’s highest youth unemployment, at 28.8% in March 2026 and 24.4% in April 2026, according to Eurostat data compiled by Statista. Germany reports the lowest youth unemployment in the bloc, near 7.5%.

Do teens still work in restaurants and retail at all?

Some do. About 34% of teens who hold summer jobs still work in accommodation and food services, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That is down from decades ago, when fast food was considered a default teen job.

Is the drop in teen summer jobs a recession warning?

Challenger, Gray & Christmas says no. Andy Challenger has pointed out that last year’s record low arrived without a recession, unlike earlier teen employment slumps in 2001 and 2009 that tracked broader downturns. That points to a structural change in how the labor market treats teenagers.