Thread: Why Teens Aren't Finding Jobs,

So, maybe LULAC and Immigration Voice will claim that we have a shortage of teenagers, and the ones we have didn't keep up their teenage skills, so we should bring in foreign teenagers to ease the shortfall. From what I see about who's working in fast food, looks like that happened.

It's a two part problem. On one hand, I blame parents, who, because they are working so much, don't have time to teach their kids a good work ethic, and instead let the kids do what they want or try to coddle them and buy them everything, in order to make up for the fact that they can't spend time with them. So, they don't make their kids go out and babysit or wash cars or mow lawns or work at fast food places because they're either too tired to tend to their kids, feel guilty for not spending time with them, or just don't care. Obviously, I'm generalizing, but I think I'm pretty accurate.

The second point is that businesses are greedy, and don't care about helping our young people...they have positions that need to be filled, and they don't care who fills them, as long as the work gets done. Adult workers, whether American citizens or illegals, are I'd say six times out of ten more productive workers than teenagers. But, the teens do need do learn responsiblity, which is why working for a lawn care service or restaurant or whatever is so important.

It also depends on the demographic of the area and type of business. In an area with rich people, you won't find as many local youths working at businesses. You'll see poorer people, legal and illegal, coming from farther away to fill those jobs.

While I believe that many young middle class and lower-middle class kids really do want to work so they can earn money, I don't think that is always the case for many of our poorer citizens...who are corrupted by lack of a father figure, Government Assistance, drugs, and gangs. Even if there wasn't illegal immigration taking alot of the jobs in poor neighborhoods, alot of these poor kids wouldn't seek employment, because their peers aren't working, and they come from broken families. As long as the gov't is giving their family money (Section 8, Welfare, Independence Card, etc) why work? Again, I'm stereotyping, but there's some definite truth to what I'm saying.

Then, with Starbucks and many retail clothing companies, you'll see tons of Americans (young Americans) doing this type of work, because our expectation as a society is to have Americans (young, and often female, but not always) to do these types of jobs. Unfortunately, the stereotype for dishwashers in alot of regions of the country with heavy immigrant populations is to have Hispanics (often illegals) to do those jobs, so you don't see as many Americans, let alone teenagers, doing those jobs as you did even 10 years ago.

Neglectful parenting, video games, greedy businesses, demographics...all have combined to hurt our teenagers when it comes to employment.

That's not what I'm seeing in my area. My old house was in a traditionally black neighborhood. Black and white kids went looking for jobs, but usually no dice. With every passing year, more and more of the staffing - up to and including customer-facing staff - became Hispanic, and by that I mean heavy accents at best, not American Hispanic. I asked a lady with a mop in the remodeled KMart where the ladies room now was, and she couldn't understand my question let alone tell me. Now I'm in an area that is over 90% white, and guess who's behind the counter at the restaurants AGAIN. They can't be from around here.

Some parents may be trying to shelter their kids. I didn't want mine working in 7-11 for example, because they got robbed so much. But the food industry was fine, as was larger retail. One of my sons got a summer job installing spas through contacts, which was very heavy work. That was fine too. When Tom Brokaw had a blog about this, one of the commentators was a father whose son got a forestry job he loved. One day they hired a man from Mexico to follow him around and learn the job and the rest was history.That is what I'm concerned with. Just as whole chunks of IT have been earmarked for the taking and it is hard for an American to get certain kinds of jobs, just as manufacturing has been given away to places like China and it is hard for American blue collar workers to get those kinds of jobs, now whole areas of work have been written off as 'jobs Americans won't do' even while there are still American incumbents doing them. Fake shortage-shouting has become a fine art in our press.