The classic teen summer job is slowly disappearing.
For decades, summer meant lifeguarding at the local pool, working the register at an ice cream shop, or surviving chaotic lunch rushes at a fast-food restaurant for minimum wage and one free soda per shift. Now, fewer teens are working summer jobs than at any point in roughly 60 years.
According to projections from employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, just 790,000 summer jobs are expected to go to teen workers this year. If that number holds, it would officially become the lowest teen summer hiring season on record. And despite what some people online might insist, it’s not just because teenagers suddenly forgot how to work.
Summer Jobs Just Aren’t What They Used to Be
Many of the businesses that traditionally hire teens are slowing down this summer. Restaurants, amusement parks, summer camps, and ice cream shops are facing higher operating costs, high fuel prices, and economic uncertainty, making them more cautious about seasonal hiring.
At the same time, a lot of entry-level jobs barely even look the same anymore. Self-order kiosks, app ordering, automated checkout systems, and AI customer service tools have quietly replaced some of the work teens used to do. Then there’s the competition.
Part-time and seasonal jobs are increasingly being filled by older workers who are staying in the workforce longer because of rising living costs and retirement concerns. The teenager working the movie theater concession stand has been replaced by adults trying to pick up extra income. Teenagers also have a lot more on their plates now than previous generations did. Between AP classes, club sports, internships, volunteering, tutoring, and college prep, summer break barely feels like a break anymore.
For a lot of families, the idea of spending all summer scooping ice cream for $11 an hour just doesn’t make as much sense as it used to.
Teens Are Finding Other Ways to Make Money
Instead of traditional summer jobs, many teens are piecing together money in other ways — and honestly, some of them sound way better than folding clothes in a freezing mall store for six hours. A Reddit thread asking how a 14-year-old could make money over the summer quickly filled with suggestions like pet sitting, babysitting, lawn mowing, house sitting, tutoring, washing cars, and helping older neighbors with chores.
Pet sitting came up constantly, mostly because people are apparently willing to pay surprisingly good money for someone to send them cute photos of their dog while they’re on vacation. Others suggested learning skills that could turn into long-term income, like website design, landscaping, carpentry, or helping local tradespeople during the summer.
A lot of teens seem to be looking at traditional summer jobs differently now. One commenter in the thread basically summed it up by warning against getting stuck in low-paying fast-food work when there are other ways to build skills and make money independently. For older generations, summer jobs were almost a rite of passage. For a lot of teens today, they just look like exhausting customer service jobs with low pay, unpredictable hours, and managers asking why nobody wants to pick up extra shifts on a Saturday.
Meanwhile, mowing a few lawns, pet sitting for neighbors, editing TikTok videos, or washing trash cans for neighbors can sometimes pay just as much … without smelling like fryer oil afterward.
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