Working Teens

My daughter has had a job since she was sixteen years old. This was in addition to taking AP classes in High School and playing Varsity Volleyball and Club Volleyball.

Fifteen years old and working seems to be becoming a norm and in fact there are many teenagers younger than fifteen who are already working at paying jobs. Some of these students are as young as 12 years old.

More than half of the secondary school students have paying jobs. This number grows with each grade level. The number of hours also rises along with the grade level. The kind of job varies depending on the sex of the child. Boys tend to deliver newspapers and girls tend to babysit. As the teens grow older, the job interests change with teenage girls turning to restaurants and retail outlets, while the boys will work in the family business , restaurants and other food related businesses. The hours that the kids have to choose from are usually from 6a.m. to 8a.m delivering newspapers and 8p.m to 6a.m. for babysitting. Most other jobs are scheduled 3pm till 10pm during the week while weekend jobs tend to have schedules of 7 to 8 hours per day.

Working more than 15 hours a week is bad for the academic career . As the work hours increase the study time decreases. Current research finds that a work schedule of 10 hours or less seems to be the best and for most teenagers a schedule of 10 hours does not effect their academic performance, in negative ways but in fact seems to help them do better in school shown by improved grades. Those teens working 10 to 15 hours per week are in a toss up situation with some doing well while others struggle. It is at the 15 hour level that things change and the work starts to effect the teens performance. Although there seems to be no direct relationship between the hour spent working and the hours spent studying and how this effects the grades, there does seem to be a relationship between the number of hours worked and the absentee rate. Those students working weekend jobs and spending most of the weekend time at say a fast food restaurant tend to miss more school.

It would be much better for these kids to run a home-based business of their own!