If you think about it long enough, the picture of a 22-year-old with a degree in quantitative economics polishing a cover letter for a part-time scooping position at an ice cream counter on Cape Cod seems almost ridiculous. Not in jest. Not as a lark during a gap year. as a genuine, competitive application in the face of hundreds of competitors.
This summer, the American labor market is roughly at that level. For only fifty seasonal positions, Sundae School Homemade Ice Cream, a single store in a seaside town, reportedly received hundreds of applications. It’s a tiny company. a small salary. However, it has come to represent something more significant: a hiring freeze that has been imposed on entry-level positions and has not been lifted.
Teens are the ones who are most directly affected. This summer will be the thinnest summer hiring season since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records back in 1948, according to projections that indicate about 790,000 teen jobs will be added, a significant decrease from last year. It’s worth sitting with, and it’s not a typo. This is the bottom of eight decades of data.
The more intriguing aspect, however, is who is currently applying for these positions—a detail that isn’t depicted in any chart. These days, it’s not just sixteen-year-olds searching for extra cash. Quietly vying for the same hourly shifts are recent college graduates, some of whom have already gained a year or two of professional experience. Retail hiring has decreased by about 30% from the previous year. Hiring in restaurants has also declined. For many young adults, the jobs that were previously thought to require a degree now seem to be the only ones that are truly available.
It’s difficult to ignore the irony. For years, the advice was straightforward: earn a degree, and everything else will fall into place. That deal appears to be deteriorating. According to reports, underemployment among recent graduates has surpassed 42%, a level not observed since the pandemic. One graduate recounted applying to more than 90 jobs, being rejected automatically by more than half of them, and being ghosted by 25%. That isn’t being lazy. That market is acting in an odd way.
This has a structural component. A human resume is competing against a keyword filter before it ever reaches a person because employers, especially larger ones, have placed a greater emphasis on automated screening tools. A portion of it is caused by economic anxiety seeping into small businesses, such as those that employ teenagers for pool decks and soft-serve counters, where owners must wait longer to add staff due to tighter margins. To be honest, part of it is that AI is taking over entry-level jobs that were once a graduate’s first step into the workforce. These jobs include spreadsheet cleanup, first-draft writing, basic research, and other tasks that junior employees used to earn their keep doing.
All that remains is an odd convergence. Teens are chasing the same ice cream counters and lifeguard chairs where their parents worked decades ago, but now they are standing next to twenty-somethings with diplomas. By the official definition, it isn’t quite a recession. However, for those working behind the counter in search of a summer job paying $16 per hour, it also doesn’t seem far off.
It’s genuinely unclear if this is a short-term squeeze or a precursor to something longer-term in the way young people enter the workforce. There seems to be disagreement among labor economists. Observing this unfold, it appears that the old script—degree first, career ladder second—is no longer writing itself as it once did. The ice cream shop is hiring, at least for the time being. The others are merely standing in line.
