Teen Jobs Surge After Seasonal Adjustments

It's an odd time of year with the seasonal adjustments for teen jobs. The raw data says the number of working teens between the ages of 16 and 19 declined month-over-month in September 2026. But after seasonal adjustments, the number of U.S. teens counted as being employed rose sharply during the month.

Practically, that means the raw decline that took place between August and September for the number of teens with jobs was much smaller than what the seasonal adjustment predicts, with the result the data is transformed into an increase after the seasonal data adjustment. Here are the non-seasonally adjusted employment numbers for all teens Age 16-19, including the break downs for younger teens (Age 16-17) and older teens (Age 18-19):

Non-Seasonally Adjusted Employment Data

• Age 16-19: 5,317,000 (Decrease of 427,000)

  • Age 16-17: 2,035,000 (Decrease of 27,000)

  • Age 18-19: 3,282,000 (Decrease of 400,000)

Now, here's what the teen jobs numbers look like after the Bureau of Labor Statistics' seasonal adjustments for each data series is applied. In reviewing these figures, note that since each demographic group gets its own seasonal adjustment, the numbers for the younger and older teen subgroups may not add up to the number for the combined working teen population.

Seasonally Adjusted Employment Data

• Age 16-19: 5,535,000 (Increase of 162,000)

  • Age 16-17: 1,973,000 (Increase of 117,000)

  • Age 18-19: 3,556,000 (Increase of 57,000)

Perhaps the biggest surprise in the seasonally adjusted employment data is the large gain shown for the number of working younger teens. It indicates more younger teens effectively stayed on the job from August to September 2026 than would be typical for this month, which accounts for the apparent surge for both younger teens and most of the increase for the combined Age 16-19 population.

The following pair of charts shows the monthly seasonally adjusted data for the working teen demographic from January 2020 through September 2026.

It's too early to tell if that seasonally-adjusted increase might be the start of a reversal of a long-running downward trend for teen employment for younger teens, but we'll learn more next few months as new employment data becomes available.