Business & Education

Teenage (Employment) Wasteland

By Danielle Kurtzleben ,

Published June 21, 2018 at 1:52 PM CDT

The teen summer job is a vaunted tradition...one that is fading. Today's teenagers just aren't working at nearly the same rates as older generations did. Today we explore why, even with really low unemployment, the teen job market isn't picking up more. Some of it is because teens don't want to work, but some of it is also because employers don't want to employ them.

Music: "Black Surf Duel"

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Business & Education

Danielle Kurtzleben

Danielle Kurtzleben is a political correspondent assigned to NPR's Washington Desk. She appears on NPR shows, writes for the web, and is a regular on The NPR Politics Podcast. She is covering the 2020 presidential election, with particular focuses on on economic policy and gender politics.

See stories by Danielle Kurtzleben

Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

See stories by Stacey Vanek Smith