The summer job, long an entry-level rite of passage into the working world for teenagers, is becoming obsolete.
Under pressure to bolster their college applications, more students are shunning the character-building, low-paying first job for extracurricular activities and year-round academics. Out are summers spent perched on a lifeguard chair slathered in zinc oxide, schlepping clubs on fairways or stacking boxes in a warehouse. In are science classes, tutoring sessions or other resumeworthy pursuits.
Take Magali Ortiz, 18, a graduate of Northside College Prep, who spent every summer vacation away from the elite, selective-enrollment Chicago public high school honing her powers of persuasion at a debate camp in Michigan.
"At my school there is sort of a culture of doing more academic things, as opposed to traditional jobs, during the summer," said Ortiz, who is headed to Tufts University.
All school and no work may be the new normal for teenagers. A study released this month by the Brookings Institution found that only 1 in 3 teenagers age 16 to 19 are working or looking for a job, down sharply from 2000, when more than half of teenagers were in the labor force.
Reduced demand for low-wage work because of automation and globalization, minimum-wage increases and competition from older workers and immigrants all play into the trend, Brookings found. But the most dramatic shift for teenagers is the replacement of summer jobs with summer school.
"We used to think summer — everybody is out of school," said Jay Shambaugh, a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings who headed the research project. "A lot more high school students are actually in school in the summer than they used to be."
Last year, nearly a third of teenagers were enrolled in summer school and not seeking work, according to the study. In 2000, just 1 in 7 teenagers were exclusively summer school students.
