Mike Brace wanted a well-paying summer job, but he didn’t want it to interfere with his sports camps, social life or family vacations.
Brace is only 16, but the Batavia junior has already absorbed an important lesson about supply and demand in a booming labor market: Why be a slave to one job when plenty of others await just around the corner?
As it turns out, Brace got lucky this summer. He landed a full-time job with the Naperville schools that pays almost $8 an hour and offers him an enviable degree of freedom. The work isn’t glamorous–moving furniture, hauling boxes, digging ditches, landscaping and painting. And his 7 a.m. start time doesn’t allow for any lazy mornings. But he has all his evenings and weekends off, and if he wants to take a day or a week or even two weeks off, that’s no problem.
He wears what he wants, he gets to talk with his friends, and there’s no boss around watching his every move.
“I know people who work at other jobs and their life revolves around their work schedule,” said Brace, who worked for the same school district last summer and learned of the unadvertised jobs program through his dad, a principal in the district. “This was my first choice, working here. It’s so flexible . . . and it doesn’t seem like the work is too hard.”
The fact that some teenagers wield such power can be maddening to many adults, who know that even seasoned professionals find it difficult to negotiate a family-friendly schedule.
Of course, the demand for downtime isn’t always about beach dates and summer concerts. Steve Mathis, 15, a student from Hinckley, Ill., will take off two weeks from his Naperville job to pursue his dream of becoming a naval aviator. He will be spending late July at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, taking an 80-hour basic ground school as part of his involvement in the Naval Sea Cadet Corps.
There was a time when summer work for teenagers seemed a lot more like, well, work: low pay, lousy hours, embarrassing uniforms, boring work and meddling managers. You didn’t get a vacation and you didn’t expect your boss to give you a day off to socialize with your friends. But nowadays, with low unemployment–just over 4 percent–and a glut of entry-level jobs that go begging, students, especially those in prosperous suburbs, find they can be choosy about where and how they work.
Projections by the Illinois Department of Employment Security suggest that demand for summer workers this year will be even higher than last summer, when about 50,000 youths found work through the state’s Hire the Future Program and state employment centers. The sharpest demand, state officials say, is in the west and northwest suburbs.
While many suburban employers are prepared to pay $7.50 to $8 an hour for summer service-sector jobs, a few employers have upped the ante by offering special training or wages as high as $13 an hour. The finicky labor pool has forced many employers to become not only a little more generous but also a lot more flexible about schedules and working conditions.
“It mirrors the `real’ work world,” said Nile Gossett, director of the Youth Motivation Program for the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. “Young people don’t think about options and leverage. They just think about what they want. And what they want is freedom, just like we do.”
Tiffany Ryan of Naperville doesn’t shy away from hard work. She spent her senior year working at a department store in the Fox Valley Mall. It paid $6.50 an hour and she liked her employee discount, but she knew the job wasn’t going to cut it for the summer. It was too much pressure–the dress code and the sales quotas and the regimented breaks and the two-week notice just to get a night off.
Ryan quit to spend her days painting classrooms at Naperville North High School, the same job she had last summer and one she feels pretty lucky to have secured again, given the fact that the school district turns away nearly as many teens as it hires for its summer jobs program.
She wanted to keep her nights open, in part for social reasons, but also so she could continue playing with the Naperville Municipal Band two evenings a week. And she had no problem getting a few weeks off, including one for a trip to Pittsburgh. It’s a break from her job, but not that much of one: She’s traveling with her church group to paint and repair homes of needy people.
There are still employers around who grouse about the lofty expectations of their young employees and reminisce about the good old days when teenagers actually had to hunt for a job and were grateful when an offer came. Freedom, they argue, should come to those who have paid their dues–not some 16-year-old looking for extra bucks to cover the car insurance or for college.
But that kind of thinking usually gives way to a grudging pragmatism. At Six Flags Great America amusement park in Gurnee, Jim Franz expects to fill some 3,000 jobs this summer, nearly three-fourths with students. And while a summer at Great America may seem like paradise to teenagers, Franz knows that the perk of free admission is not enough to entice student workers or keep them working an entire summer.
“We’ve become a lot more flexible,” said Franz, Great America’s human resources manager. “It used to be, `This is your schedule and that’s it.’ But some of the local kids have so many other commitments, we have to work around that.”
That could mean shifting a schedule to nights when football camp starts. Or giving them a chance to work four 10-hour days. Or even accommodating a week away with the family.
Of course, there are still teens willing to break a sweat working at fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s. The quandary for those employers is how to attract and keep the good ones.
Jerry Bear, who owns nine McDonald’s in the Elgin area and one in Evanston, said he has had to shift his thinking dramatically during 32 years of running the restaurants. His demand that managers hire only “A” students went by the wayside long ago. And he hires fewer teens these days, relying on an older full-time crew.
But he has decided to go beyond the play-friendly schedules and water park parties that his young employees crave. In the next few months, he plans to offer college tuition reimbursements and management-track training to pull in college-bound kids, hopefully those serious about working hard and saving money.
“My goal is to raise the standard. And to attract that person, you have to give them something,” Bear said.
Tiffany Ryan’s mother, Michele, appreciates the fact that students today don’t have to choose between doing the things they enjoy and earning a steady paycheck. And she has observed that teens tend to be more loyal to those employers who respect their busy schedules.
In fact, her daughter opted to skip an out-of-town Christian rock festival with friends, knowing that she could get the days off if she asked but not wanting to take advantage of her boss’ generosity.
“With that freedom, she’s learned a little more about making the right choices,” Ryan said. “Still, I wouldn’t want to see it get too loose.”
