Tag Archive for: Teen employment

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NCL’s Five Most Dangerous Jobs 2012 Report Helps Teens Stay Safe at Work

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It’s that time of year again in the United States: teens are pounding the pavement looking for summer work. Having a job can be an important part of youth development, but the worst work – the ones on this year’s Five Most Dangerous Teen Jobs – should be avoided in some cases or accepted with caution in others.

Jobs for teens are an important part of youth development, providing both needed income and teaching valuable work skills. According to research, teen jobs increase future earnings and also decrease the likelihood the working teen will drop out.

Since 2000 the percentage of working teens has fallen 40 percent—in part because the federal government has cut back on funding for youth programs and in part because of the global economic recession. Job competition may lead working teens who are desperate for work to seek jobs that are unsafe for them.

The National Consumers League (NCL) provides its annual update of its Five Most Dangerous Jobs for Teens to help teenagers and their parents make safer job choices and to increase awareness of job dangers they may encounter.

NCL is also concerned that some states a few states weakened child protections in 2011, and the federal government withdrew proposed rules that would have made work for teens in agriculture much safer.

Each day in America, 12 to 13 workers of all ages die and some of the victims are youth workers. In 2010, 34 workers under 18 died in the workplace—nearly half of those workers (16) were under 16 years old. In the 18 to 19 age group, another 56 workers died.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimates that each year about 146,000 youth sustain work-related injuries. That translates to 400 young workers injured on the job every day.

NCL’s Five Most Dangerous Jobs for Teens in 2012: (full report appears at the end of this article)

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Construction and Height Work–One of the Five Most Dangerous Jobs for Teens in the U.S.

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According to Bureau of Labor Statistics fatality records, construction and roofing are two of the ten most dangerous jobs in America. In 2007, an estimated 372,000 workers of all ages were injured in construction accidents and construction led other industries in the number of deaths among all workers: 1,178. A construction worker is nearly three times as likely to die from a work accident as the average American worker. One bright spot: construction fatalities among private companies have fallen 40 percent since 2006. However, the potential injury remains a very dangerous one.

Young workers are especially at risk given their relative inexperience on work sites and commonplace dangers construction sites often pose. According to NIOSH in 2002, youth 15-17 working in construction had greater than seven times the risk for fatal injury as youth in other industries. In a 2003 release, NIOSH noted that despite only employing 3 percent of youth workers, construction was the third leading cause of death for young workers—responsible for 14 percent of all occupational deaths to youth under 18.

In June 2009, a 9-year-old Alabama boy at a construction site fell through a skylight and was seriously injured. Press reports did not reveal if the boy was actually working, but according to state inspectors his presence at a site at which minors are prohibited from working is considered evidence of employment under the law.

Other examples of recent construction deaths among teens can be found below:

• In November 2011, 18-year-old Maynro Perez died working on a construction site in Rock Hill, South Carolina in an accident that involved a backhoe.
• In August 2010 in Edgerton, Ohio, 18-year-old Keith J. LaFountain died of injuries from blunt force trauma when a wall fell over from high winds.
• That same month in Grand Island, Nebraska, 19-year-old Emilio DeLeon was electrocuted after coming in contact with power lines while working as a roofer. DeLeon was in the bucket of a crane when the lines were touched.

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Working More Than 20 Hours a Week in High School Found Harmful

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Society for Research in Child Development Press Release

Many teens work part-time during the school year, and in the current economic climate, more youths may take jobs to help out with family finances. But caution is advised: Among high school students, working more than 20 hours a week during the school year can lead to academic and behavior problems.
That’s the finding of a new study by researchers at the University of Washington, University of Virginia, and Temple University. It appears in the January/February issue of the journal, Child Development.
In a reanalysis of longitudinal data collected in the late 1980s, researchers examined the impact of getting a job or leaving work among middle-class teens in 10th and 11th grades. Drawing from the full sample of about 1,800 individuals, the researchers compared adolescents who got jobs to similar teens who didn’t work, and adolescents who left jobs to similar teens who kept working.
Using advances in statistical methods, the researchers matched the teens on a long list of background and personality characteristics that are known to influence whether or not a young person chooses to work; using this technique allowed more certainty in estimating the effects of working on adolescents’ development than in the original analysis of the data.
The researchers found that working for more than 20 hours a week was associated with declines in school engagement and how far adolescents were expected to go in school, and increases in problem behavior such as stealing, carrying a weapon, and using alcohol and illegal drugs. They also found that things didn’t get better when teens who were working more than 20 hours a week cut back their hours or stopped working altogether. In contrast, working 20 hours or less a week had negligible academic, psychological, or behavioral effects.

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