Skip navigation
Restaurants less keen on hiring teens in some regions hit hardest by higher costs

Restaurants less keen on hiring teens in some regions hit hardest by higher costs

Hurt by rising costs and softer sales, operators in many areas are shying away from hiring teenage workers and seeking out older, more experienced employees who cost less to train, can work longer hours and are more likely to stay on the job when school resumes in September.

Restaurateurs in New Jersey are among those being more judicious in their hiring to reduce costs for training inexperienced workers who often are unable to work as many hours as older employees, said Deborah Dowdell, president of the New Jersey Restaurant Association.

Operators “don’t have the luxury right now of hiring teens,” she said. “They really are having to scrutinize their labor costs as fuel and labor cost increases are affecting their bottom lines.”

Paul Brewster, owner of Fitzgerald’s 1928, a casual dinnerhouse in Glen Ridge, N.J., says his mix of employees includes college students, “but my general feeling is, it is a better strategy to employ workers who can work throughout the year unless your business picks up only in the summer.”

“I’ve seen too many [restaurants struggling] in the last week in August because there is no help; everyone has gone back to school,” he said.

In Connecticut, Bob DeZinno, president of the state’s restaurant association, said that while the economy is not as bad as in some other states, operators are being careful with their summer hiring practices.

“I do hear operators saying they won’t be able to hire as many summer workers, that they won’t be adding help,” he said. “Others are tightening up their marketing budgets, advertising less and scrutinizing expenses more than they usually do.

“We have looked at the national figures and seen that about two-thirds of teenagers probably won’t find a job [this summer]. Some would argue this is not really a wise move, but it’s indicative that operators are just looking to spend on what they consider is essential today.”

A U.S. Department of Labor report released last month found that the unemployment rate among 16- to 19-year-olds rose from 15.4 percent in April to 18.7 percent in May. The country’s overall unemployment currently hovers at 5.5 percent.

According to Bruce Grindy, chief economist for the National Restaurant Association, the number of jobless teens could turn into a boon for the industry. The national teen labor pool is at its highest level this summer, with 577,000 youngsters entering the employee pool in May, Grindy said. Of that number, 261,000 were between the ages of 16 and 19, and 182,000 were between the ages of 20 and 24, he explained.

“Both figures are record highs for the month of May,” Grindy said, noting that the numbers are seasonally adjusted to exclude typical patterns of kids getting out of school.

“We’ll have to see how this plays out for the rest of the summer, but I think this is an extremely positive trend for the industry because these are the employees—16- to 24-year-olds—that make up one-half of the industry’s workforce.”

Peter Christie, president of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, said jobs on Cape Cod should be plentiful for local teens this summer, the result of many legal alien workers being unable to obtain H2B visas for work in the United States.

“It’s wide open, since [so many of] the H2B visas weren’t renewed this year,” he said. “Almost none were approved. On Cape Cod, anyone who can get down there can get a job. There’s not a huge demand, but certainly [for] any place near the coastline or along the seaboard or western part of the state, like the Berkshires, it seems hard to imagine a young teenager couldn’t get a job working part time this summer.

In New Hampshire, jobs for teenagers are available, but probably mostly in shifts offering fewer hours, said Martin Capodice, a program specialist with the state’s Department of Employment Security.

“That’s what happens when there’s kind of a slowdown, [businesses] give kids fewer hours,” he said. “Instead of the usual 25 to 30 hours a week, they might use them for 10 or 12 hours a week. There’ll be a smaller paycheck, but they’ll still have those jobs.”

Even as teen employment remains a mixed bag for the summer, in the long term the restaurant industry is going to have to start looking at other labor sources besides teenagers because the need for workers will grow larger than the number of youngsters available for jobs, the NRA’s Grindy said.

“Between 2008 and 2018, we project that industry employment will grow by about 16 percent,” he said. “During that same period, we expect the overall labor force to grow 9 percent, while the 16-to-24-year-old labor force is projected to decline 7 percent. It may not be necessary to start this summer, but over the long term, restaurants will need to tap into other alternative sources of labor.

“I’m not implying that restaurants will be substituting alternative sources of labor for young people, but really expanding their overall pool to include these alternative sources,” he said. “Young people will always represent the majority of workers in the industry and will continue to be the genesis of success stories of people starting in the dish room and ending up in the boardroom.”

TAGS: Archive
Hide comments

Comments

  • Allowed HTML tags: <em> <strong> <blockquote> <br> <p>

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Publish