Teen employment resumed falling in October 2024, marking a fast end to the rebound indicated in the previous month's jobs numbers.

The total seasonally-adjusted count of employed Americans Age 16-19 dropped to an initial estimate of 5,441,000. That decline occurred despite the number of Age 18-19 year olds increasing by 30,000 to 3,428,900, which means all of the decline in teen employment was concentrated among younger teens. The number of employed Americans Age 16-17 dropped below the two-million threshold for the first time since July 2021, with an initial estimate of 1,998,000.

The negative changes in teen employment occurred as the seasonally-adjusted total employment figure dropped by 368,000 to 161,496,000.

The following pair of charts shows the trends for the seasonally-adjusted teen employment and the teen employment-to-population figures from January 2016 through October 2024.

We've focused on the seasonally-adjusted numbers, but October 2024's raw non-seasonally-adjusted jobs count is much more interesting. Going by those numbers, the total number of employed Americans Age 16 and older decreased by 108,000 to 161,938,000 from September to October.

Of that net decline, just under one percent is attributable to Americans Age 20 and older. The remaining 99% of the raw decline in October 2024's jobs was experienced by U.S. teens. Specifically, the Age 16-17 portion of the employed teen population.

The declines in jobs by demographic age group are not what we expected. Especially seeing as October 2024's jobs numbers were negatively impacted by a 7-week long machinists strike at Boeing, which involved very few if any teenage workers and the disruptive aftereffects of Hurricane Helene in the southeastern U.S. Having virtually all of the negative impact seemingly concentrated almost entirely within the Age 16-17 portion of the U.S. labor force is a unique reading.

References

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Force Statistics (Current Population Survey - CPS). [Online Database]. Accessed: 1 November 2024.

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