The Job Market for Young Adults: Working for Fun and Profit
On the old Dobbie Gillis show, Maynard G. Krebs' voice used to crack every time he said the word “work.” To him, work was a dirty word. Today, things are different; kids work, even at a young age, and each kid has his own reasons for working.
Financial Building Blocks
According to a survey reported in USA Today, about two-thirds of college students work to earn money while they're in school. About a quarter of them earn between $200 and $400 a month; more than a quarter of them earn even more.
Some do it only (or mainly) for the money—they need or want extra money, and working is the way to get it.
Others do it for a variety of other reasons—they want to fill up their time, gain experience, or just get out into the world.
Of course, before your child takes a job, it's a good idea for you to discuss certain parameters about working: how many hours a week you think is appropriate, how far you'll let your child travel to a job, and what type of work you think is acceptable (or unacceptable). You don't want your child commuting and working long hours at the expense of the time needed for school work or other activities.
Non-monetary Benefits of Working
Working can do more for your child than provide spending money. Many of these benefits also may translate into dollars down the road:
Piggybank on It
Children too young to work can begin to learn about the work ethic at home by doing chores. They'll learn how to start and finish an assigned task, which is a good foundation for getting a job.
- Instilling a good work ethic. It may sound old-fashioned, but there's nothing wrong with having a strong sense of responsibility when it comes to work. Understanding what's required to get and keep a job or to earn a promotion are just basic parts of being a responsible adult. The earlier a child starts to learn this responsibility, the more natural it becomes. Taking responsibility for work also can carry over to taking responsibility for money, too.
- Learning skills. Okay, so stocking shelves at the A&P or flipping burgers at McDonalds doesn't exactly supply the job skills of a lifetime. But it can help a child learn to pace herself to get work done and gain self-confidence in doing something well. Some jobs can offer a child the chance to learn things that can be helpful in landing better jobs later, and working at any job can teach time-management skills. It's the old cliché of asking a busy person to handle a job that needs to get done. Working will help a child learn to manage her time more effectively.
- Gaining experience. It's the old catch 22: The job requires work experience, but your child can't get that experience without getting a job. Starting at a job—any job—is the first step in building up work experience that can be used to catapult your child later into a better job.
- Trying out work environments. Does your child think he'd enjoy working in a hotel? In television? He can use a job to test possible career paths. When my daughter was in high school, she thought she wanted to be a scientist until she worked for a summer in a physicist's lab. This job convinced her that she did not want to spend her working years cooped up in a lab.
- Testing aptitude. Getting a job now not only can show your child that she likes a particular field, but it also can show her whether she's good at it. She may want to go into radio, but working at the campus radio station can show her whether she has the voice quality and the gift of gab needed to pursue her dream. It's better to learn early that she's headed down a dead-end career path so that she can change her dream and go off in another direction.
Piggybank on It
Earning a paycheck is the quickest way to teach a child the value of a dollar. When she has to work for it, she's less apt to take the money for granted. A $15 CD has more meaning when a child realizes that she has had to work three hours to pay for it.
Financial Building Blocks
The federal minimum wage rate started in 1938 at 25¢ an hour. It's currently $5.15 an hour for most workers, but there's a subminimum wage of $4.25 an hour for workers under 20 years of age during their first 90 consecutive days of employment. Some states, however, have higher minimum hourly rates. There's talk in Congress of increasing the rate in the future (the last increase was in 1997).
One of the biggest benefits your child can have from working is the chance to earn his own money. This money can be used to gain a measure of independence for your child: He can support an active social life, buy a car, or go to college.
Working may become necessary as your child gets older and his tastes become more expensive or you decide that you are no longer going to pay for certain things. If your child wants these items, he'll have to earn his own money.
Working can be the start of a meaningful financial education. It can give your child enough money to allow him to start a checking account and a savings program. It can also give your child a true understanding of what jobs really pay—something that the majority of kids seem to lack. According to a survey on teens and money by Weekend USA, 42 percent of teenagers expect to earn $75,000 a year by the time they're 30. The average 30-year-old today earns about $27,000.
For general information about the federal minimum wage and labor laws, go to the Department of Labor's Web site at www.dol.gov. You can also call DOL's Teen Safety Hotline at 800-959-3652.
Excerpted from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Money-Smart Kids © 1999 by Barbara Weltman. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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