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gen z teens get a crash course in pitfalls of us jobs market business and economy news 50632

Gen Z teens get a crash course in pitfalls of US jobs market | Business and Economy News

Every summer in the United States, teens across the country pound the pavement in search of gainful employment. But this year, teens belonging to Generation Z, the cohort born between 1997 and 2012, are finding a mother lode of job openings to choose from.

Among them is 16-year-old Hailey Hamilton of Flower Mound, Texas. She recently quit her job at a pizza restaurant, confident that she could quickly land a new one at her local mall.

“Everyone is looking to hire right now,” she told Al Jazeera. “Everyone is understaffed.”

Sixteen-year-old Wren Carter of Minneapolis easily landed a job at a fast-casual salad restaurant in April after texting the general manager, securing a phone interview, and getting hired on the spot.

“My mom threatened to send me off to camp if I didn’t get a job to get responsibility and experience instead of doing nothing all summer,” Carter told Al Jazeera. “I did want to earn extra money.”

Over in Tennessee, 19-year-old Addison Howard tested just how valuable his teenage labour has become when he decided to return to work at a fast-food restaurant that employed him three years ago.

“When I first started in 2018, I was getting $7.50 an hour, but they increased it to $12 this summer when I came back,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that he was unwilling to accept anything under $10 an hour.

In Maryland, Olivia Gyapong found work as a cashier at a Safeway grocery store. “I was just trying to find a random summer job; I didn’t know what I was going to do, but tons of places were hiring — I had a lot to choose from,” the 18-year-old told Al Jazeera.

Everyone is looking to hire right now.

Hailey Hamilton, 16-year-old

The US economy had a record 9.2 million job openings in May, the most recent month for which data is available.

Many of the jobs that are going begging are in customer-facing services industries: restaurants, bars and retail shops that are gearing up operations as consumers unleash pent-up demand.

Unable to be picky, many businesses are choosing to hire teens while unemployed adults — some 8.7 million of them in July, according to the US Department of Labor — remain on the sidelines.

Less than a third of the nation’s teens were employed during the summer of 2020. This year, though, they have roared back into the jobs market with a vengeance.

In May, 33.2 percent of US teens aged 16-19 had a job — the highest since 2008. The share of teens in employment slipped back to 31.9 percent in June, but climbed again to 32.7 percent in July, placing the share back above pre-pandemic levels.

While many entry-level jobs come with the usual trappings that teens look for — satisfying their parents’ requests or stowing away extra cash for purchases or college — Gen Z’ers are also learning unique lessons about the pitfalls of the US labour market thanks to the “post”-pandemic context of their employment.

It’s mostly high schoolers and I see them working 40- or 50-hour weeks.

Addison Howard, 19-year-old

Stepping into the jobs breach

The mismatch between the number of job openings and jobless adults in the US has become the subject of heated debate.

Some observers say myriad factors are keeping unemployed workers from finding new positions, such as early retirement, too many businesses chasing the same set of skills at once, an ongoing lack of childcare options, fears of contracting COVID-19, and a desire to avoid the growing number of vaccine mandates by employers.

Many Republicans are blaming the $300-a-week federal weekly top-up to state unemployment benefits for enabling adult workers to be pickier about the next job they’ll take. As a result, dozens of states — the majority of them led by Republican governors — have decided to withdraw from federal unemployment benefits programmes before they expire in early September.

Regardless of what is stopping grown-ups from taking advantage of a jobs market awash in opportunities, it is not dissuading teens from stepping into the breach.

Howard and Gyapong are pulling double duty this summer, balancing the service industry jobs they do for cash with other commitments they’ve taken on to advance their career and public-service goals. Gyapong is interning for a member of Congress in Washington, DC, and Howard is running the camera for a local baseball team and managing livestreams and music for a nearby church.

I think it’s sad sometimes that these teens are working 30-, 40-, 50-hour weeks.

Addison Howard, 19-year-old

While Howard chooses to burn the candle at both ends in separate jobs, he says many of his fellow teens at his service gig are overworked, thanks to chronic understaffing.

“It’s mostly high schoolers and I see them working 40- or 50-hour weeks, doing a part-time job with full-time hours,” he said. “Maybe their parents are making them pay for college or they’re buying a car, but I think it’s sad sometimes that these teens are working 30-, 40-, 50-hour weeks.”

Hamilton said that she and many of her fellow part-time employees at the pizza restaurant where she was employed until June consistently worked more than 40 hours a week, thanks in large part to a lack of staff.

“Everyone is understaffed because of COVID and all of the unemployment. A lot of people said ‘honestly, I don’t need this job’ and they left,” Hamilton said. “We get so much put on us — we’re running a whole store and we’re in charge of everything.”

A lack of training has also been problematic for some of these teens.

“It’s kind of like we all don’t know what to do sometimes. We’re all severely undertrained,” said Carter, the salad restaurant employee. “I kinda just got thrown in on my first day. I still don’t know how to prep half of [the ingredients], so I just stick to the things I know how to do.”

And customers are not always understanding of the challenges Gen Z summer workers are facing.

“Adults would come in and scream at us because stuff is wrong or taking too long,” said Hamilton. “It’s just a bunch of kids working here.”

“I wish people would just treat others with more kindness, especially those coming into work — you don’t know their story or what they’re going through,” said Howard.

The rude customers, long hours, and lack of training have made some of these young employees far more compassionate toward adults who are choosing not to re-enter the labour market for now.

Hamilton said she was far more frustrated with adult customers at the pizza restaurant who seemed to be oblivious to the current employment situation than workers who are opting to stay at home and collect unemployment.

Gyapong sees it as “a reflection of how poorly people are paid in this country, that they’re making more money by not working”.

Howard also hopes the shifting landscape of the US labour market convinces policymakers to raise the federal minimum wage, noting “There are families working over 40 hours just to get scraps of money.”



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g7 iran behind tanker attack threatens international peace shipping news 50594

G7: Iran behind tanker attack, ‘threatens international peace’ | Shipping News

 

Tehran denies being behind a drone attack against an Israel-linked tanker, but G7 says ‘all available evidence clearly points to Iran’.

G7 foreign ministers have said “all available evidence clearly points to Iran” being behind a drone attack on July 29 against an Israel-linked tanker that killed a former British soldier and Romanian national.

“This was a deliberate and targeted attack, and a clear violation of international law … There is no justification for this attack,” the ministers from the world’s seven most developed nations said in a statement on Friday.

The vessel was a Liberian-flagged, Japanese-owned petroleum products tanker managed by Israeli-owned Zodiac Maritime.

Iran has strongly denied having any link to the attack on the MV Mercer Street, which came as tensions grow in the region and talks to revive the 2015 deal on the Iranian nuclear programme at a standstill.

But European countries and the United States renewed their accusations at a closed-door Security Council meeting at the UN headquarters in New York Friday.

“The UK knows that Iran was responsible for this attack. We know it was deliberate and targeted,” said British Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward, who added the evidence was “clear cut”.

“The door for diplomacy and dialogue remains open. But if Iran chooses not to take that route, then we would seek to hold Iran to account and apply a cost to that,” she told reporters.

The Security Council is due to discuss the incident further at an open meeting on maritime security on Monday.

The G7 ministers said “vessels must be allowed to navigate freely in accordance with international law” and promised to “do our utmost to protect all shipping, upon which the global economy depends”.

“Iran’s behaviour, alongside its support to proxy forces and non-state armed actors, threatens international peace and security,” they said, calling on Tehran to stop all activities inconsistent with the Security Council resolutions.

‘Iran will not hesitate to defend itself’

The United States and Israel have pointed the finger at Iran for being behind the attack on the tanker, which is managed by a prominent Israeli businessman in London.

Iran’s deputy UN Ambassador Zahra Ershadi rejected the accusations that Tehran was behind the attack and warned against any retaliation: “Iran will not hesitate to defend itself and secure its national interests.”

In a separate statement, the US military said explosives experts from the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier – which deployed to assist the Mercer Street – concluded the drone was produced in Iran.

It said the explosives experts were able to recover several pieces of a drone, including a part of the wing and internal components which it said were nearly identical to previously collected samples of Iranian attack drones.

The US military also suggested the attack may have been launched from the Iranian coast, saying the distance to the locations of the attacks “was within the range of documented Iranian one-way attack” drones.

“Some of the material was transferred to US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain and subsequently to a US national laboratory for further testing and verification,” Central Command, which oversees US forces in the region, said in the statement.

Security analysts have said the fatal attack upped the stakes in the “shadow war” against vessels linked to Iran and Israel.

On Tuesday, Iran was again blamed for an alleged hijacking of an asphalt and bitumen tanker in the Gulf of Oman, prompting more denials from the Islamic republic.

The tensions have come as hardline former judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi took over this week as Iranian president following his victory in the June elections, replacing Hassan Rouhani who was seen as a more moderate figure.

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