Feeling jobbed
Work for teens scarcer as elders defer retirement
Three months away from her 65th birthday, when many people are getting ready to retire, Kathy Palliola has no plans to give up her job at the CVS store in Spencer, where she spends up to 20 hours a week working the greeting card section and helping on cash registers.
"You've got to get out and be with people," she said. "I'm too young to retire."
Devon Whitley, meanwhile, would like to find a job like Palliola's because she's trying to earn money for college. A senior at Noonan Business Academy in Dorchester, Whitley, 18, has been looking for part-time work since September, applying to at least eight retailers, not to mention a caterer. She's had interviews but no offers.
"They all say, 'At this time we can't use you,' " said Whitley. "It's been really frustrating."
Whitley and Palliola represent what a new study identifies as a worrisome trend. As older Americans, by necessity or choice, work beyond traditional retirement ages, young men and women are increasingly shut out from the job market, according to the study by researchers at Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies.
Since the beginning of the decade, the employment rate, or percentage of people working, has declined broadly for Americans under 30, with teens hardest hit, according to the study. The percentage of working US teens plunged to 33 percent, or 1 in 3, in 2008, from 45 percent in 2000, or nearly 1 in 2. Meanwhile, the percentage of working adults over 55 rose to 38 percent nationally from 32 percent.
The trend is similar in Massachusetts. The employment rate of adults over 55 rose to 39 percent from 33 percent during this period, while the percentage of working teens fell sharply to 38 percent from 48 percent.
The implications for the US economy are serious, since young workers will be called on to support a burgeoning population of elderly baby boomers, said Andrew Sum, the center's director and the study's lead author. Work experience at a young age develops skills and habits that lead to greater productivity, employability, and higher wages over the long term, but increasingly, teens and young adults are denied these formative opportunities.
"We have taken the old adage 'in with the new and out with the old' and stood it on its head," Sum wrote in the study. "We have steadily increased the ranks of the employed with older workers and thrown the young out in the cold."
Industries that traditionally offered work to teens, such as retail, food service, and entertainment, are increasingly filling jobs with older workers, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies. The number of 55- to 64-year-olds working in these industries has increased nationally by nearly 500,000, or 25 percent, since 2000. Teen employment in these industries declined by nearly 560,000, or 12 percent, during the same period.
Sum said the federal government needs to create job programs aimed at teens and young adults, including wage subsidies to encourage employers to hire them. The study calls for programs to create up to 1 million summer jobs for young adults in school and 500,000 full-time jobs for those out of school.
Mitsouka Exantus, 16, a junior at Boston International High School, began looking for an after-school job to earn money for college and help her family because her mother is out of work. Exantus tried retailers and fast-food restaurants, but a year later, she's still searching.
"I've filled out so many applications I can't even remember," she said. "I need a job so bad."
In many cases, said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, stores can't afford to hire, train, and teach work skills to teens. In Massachusetts, for example, state law requires retailers to pay a minimum wage of $8 an hour and time-and-a-half on Sunday.
"A 14-year-old getting $12 per hour minimum on Sundays to bag groceries by and large is not going to be as productive for your wage investment as someone who has years of experience in the job market," Hurst said. "All things being equal, you are naturally going to hire the more productive and experienced worker."
Several factors, meanwhile, are increasing participation of older adults in the workforce, starting with longer lives and the need to finance longer retirements, according to economists. Soaring healthcare costs, the demise of traditional pensions, and the erosion of retirement accounts in Wall Street's meltdown have also compelled many to keep working.
John Elwell took an entry-level sales job at L.L. Bean in Freeport, Maine, to supplement his income after retiring more than decade ago as a marketing manager for a manufacturer of store-brand products. Now 73, he's still working on the floor of the women's department. He plans to stay two more years.
"I wanted to stay busy," said Elwell. "With what's happened to 401(k)s lately, it's been a blessing in disguise."
With some 78 million baby boomers reaching retirement age over the next 20 years, many companies have launched efforts to recruit and retain older workers because of concerns about future labor shortages. CVS Caremark Corp., for example, has increased the number of older workers to nearly 1 in 5 of its 210,000 employees from less than 1 in 10 in the early 1990s.
Many of these efforts are aimed at retaining skills. After a career spent mostly as a hospital pharmacist, Palliola's husband, Mario, was nearing retirement when CVS recruited him to work in the Spencer store's pharmacy seven years ago. Now 70, he said, "They're going to have to drag me out of here on a gurney."
Workers like Mario Palliola, however, suggest that Sum's study may overstate the competition between young and old because most older workers don't occupy entry-level positions favored by younger ones, said Steven Sass, associate director at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. The study also makes the unlikely assumption that demand for workers will remain inadequate to employ both old and young after the economy recovers, Sass said.
But Sum said the decline in teen employment isn't a short-term phenomenon related to the recession. During the labor market expansion from 2003 to 2007, overall US employment increased by nearly 9 million. Teen employment declined by 39,000.
Neil Sullivan, executive director of Boston Private Industry Council, a nonprofit workforce development agency, said retailers in particular have cut back on teen hiring. "Through technology, through adults," Sullivan said, "the economy has found ways to substitute for young people."
Robert Gavin can be reached at rgavin@globe.com. 