Research

Recruiting and Retaining Young Adults to the Park and Recreation Workforce

By Kevin Roth

Last month, I wrote about the particularly acute labor shortage facing employers across the United States. As recently as October, employers reported having more than 11 million open positions. State and local governments were not immune, with nearly a half-million unfilled noneducation jobs.

The difficulty in recruiting and retaining workers is not a new phenomenon. This is especially true for summer jobs that tend to attract teenagers and young adults. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a seasonally adjusted 5.369 million people ages 16 to 19 held a job this past July. The good news is that this essentially matched the number of employed young adults in July 2019. Less sanguine, however, is the fact that the number of working 16- to 19-year-olds was down 26 percent from its summertime peak in 1999.

The issue is not for a lack of available young adults. In fact, the number of people ages 16 to 19 increased by nearly four percentage points over the same 22 years. Rather, a smaller percentage of young adults are working. The employment-to-population ratio for young adults has plummeted by 12 percentage points to 32.7 percent during the summer of 2021.

Fewer teenagers and young adults are looking for jobs. The 16- to 19-year-old labor force, which consists of young adults currently working or actively seeking employment, has contracted by 29 percent from July 1999 to 5.938 million people last summer. But the past 21 years only tell a part of the story. The summertime 16- to 19-year-old labor force has declined by 35 percent since its 1978 peak of 9.749 million people. Over the same time span, young adults’ labor force participation rate has plummeted from 58.4 percent to 36.1 percent.

Recently, there has been a rise in the youth labor force participation rate. The percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds seeking a summertime job bottomed out in 2015 at 33.7 percent and had rebounded to 36.7 percent in 2019. Greater youth participation in the labor market over the past year is a direct result of challenges many employers have had recruiting workers, as many people have been unable or unwilling to work as the pandemic waned.

But do not expect to see the recent rise in youth workers to continue, as the fundamentals that resulted in far fewer teenager and young adults working have remained in place.

A June 2021 Pew Research Center report (tinyurl.com/2p8wwck8) identifies several factors for why fewer young adults seek summertime employment: • Shorter school summer breaks (with schools in many areas not breaking until mid- to late-June and others starting the school year before Labor Day) • Students taking high school or college classes during the summer break • Students volunteering in the community (often because of high school graduation requirements, a desire to boost a college admissions application or a desire for service) • Less availability of low-skill, entry-level jobs (especially office- and retail-based opportunities)

A separate report from The Brookings Institution (tinyurl.com/ vv8srt2m) also finds school responsibilities crowding out the desire or ability of teenagers to seek work.

Parks and recreation is a major employer of youth. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic data identify “arts, entertainment and recreation” as the third biggest summertime employer of 16- to 19-year-olds, behind only accommodation/food services and retail. Further, park and recreation agencies are a significant source of first-time jobs.

To read the remainder of the article, visit nrpa.org/RecruitingYoungAdults.

Parks and recreation is a major employer of youth.

Kevin Roth is NRPA’s Vice President of Research, Evaluation and Technology (kroth@nrpa.org).