It’s good for teenagers to have jobs, so why are people freaking out over it?
Timothy P. Carney
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The past month or so has seen a major freakout over teenagers holding jobs. Here’s a pro-union organization objecting to a teenager working at a Chick-Fil-A:
Here’s a progressive activist also getting really upset about an employer hiring 14- and 15-year-olds.
I am sure many readers, like myself, had an on-the-books taxpaying job at age 14. I think it was really good for me — and not mostly because of the money I earned. Being an usher at the local movie theater taught me about business, about responsibility, about dealing with angry people, about how to be a servant, about playing a role, about enforcing rules, and sometimes not enforcing rules. It taught me sacrifice and balance. So did the dog-walking and lawn-mowing jobs I did before New York state allowed me to work officially.
Iowa and Arkansas are reforming their labor laws, which has triggered a series of freakouts.
“Child labor protections are the latest Republican target,” reads the Vox headline. “Arkansas is leading the charge against laws that protect kids — despite revelations of dangerous child labor nationwide,” the subhead explains.
The premise there is that children need to be protected from making money and gaining experience and virtue by running a cash register.
Gavin Newsom, the governor of a state that makes it as hard as possible for anyone to enter the workforce (at least legally), snarked at Arkansas for trying to help poor children rise out of poverty.
All of these headlines and tweets rely on a simple sleight of hand. They imply that the teenage jobs of 2023 are sweat-shop jobs of 1903 for 8-year-olds — or at least that there is a slippery slope from letting a ninth grade girl be a hostess at an IHOP to forcing little Bobby into fixing broken machinery. Arkansas, of course, still has plenty of strict laws that keep younger teenagers from working potentially dangerous jobs or too many hours.
When the labor market is so tight, and when American youth are deeply suffering from the lack of direction, connection, and purpose that the COVID lockdowns imposed on them, it makes perfect sense to reform labor law and give teenagers more opportunities. Some labor unions don’t like it because it’s competition for hours. Some liberals just can’t believe that deregulation is ever right, no matter how obviously salutary it is. And some media outlets just like peddling the most tendentious material possible.
But Iowa and Arkansas are doing the right thing in helping teenagers work.