February 2022 - Parks & Recreation - 16

RESEARCH
Recruiting and Retaining Young Adults to
the Park and Recreation Workforce
By Kevin Roth
ast 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 16to
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
Parks and recreation is a major
employer of youth.
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.
16 Parks & Recreation | FEBR U AR Y 2 0 22 | PARK S ANDRECRE AT ION . OR G
L
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
community
volunteering
(often
because
in the
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 officeand
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.
Kevin Roth is NRPA's Vice President of
Research, Evaluation and Technology
(kroth@nrpa.org).
https://www.tinyurl.com/2p8wwck8 https://www.tinyurl.com/vv8srt2m https://www.tinyurl.com/vv8srt2m http://www.nrpa.org/RecruitingYoungAdults
February 2022 - Parks & Recreation

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