A Youth Employment Division of the Dept. of Labor

I was very surprised to learn that the Department of Labor does not offer help to job seekers younger than 18-years-old. There are notices on DOL cork boards about child labor laws and Job Corps, which is a job training program for 16 to 24-year-olds, nothing, however, about jobs that our youth who are under 18 can work after a traditional school day...

The Memphis Office of Youth Services manages programs for a limited number of 14 to 21-year-olds who live in Memphis. One of those programs is Mploy Youth,* which randomly selects and offers employment to approximately 1,000 youth via a computerized lottery. The other is MAP (Memphis Ambassadors Program), which is a year-round program for 400 students in grades 9 through 12. MAP offers full-time internships to seniors during the summer, while other students participate in a two-week enrichment camp to "build employment skills, gain cultural exposure, learn about health and wellness" and "participate in team-building activities" (*My son applied to and was not selected for the 2016 Mploy Youth program. I'm personally helping him apply for jobs, however. Nonetheless, all parents are not aware that their teens can work and/or experience challenges finding companies that hire teens younger than 18).   

The lack of constructive after school activities for our youth is one of the primary reasons that crime is so prevalent amongst them. There should be youth employment divisions or provisions that would help all eligible youth create and perfect resumes and conduct job searches amongst those companies that would hire them.

A program of the sort should have established criteria, of course—Those who work after school should be required to maintain acceptable GPAs of certainly no less than a C average. DOL employment websites should enable creation of youth accounts via which students could upload and/or create resumes and upload report cards and other relevant documents, and/or the sites should be enabled to electronically retrieve students’ grades from their schools each progress and report card period, or when they are updated in PowerSchool; each youth employment office should have tutoring labs to help those who are struggling academically, with the goal of helping them qualify to work.

Students who have been retained or failed a grade should be required to attend summer school and not be allowed to work until they are showing acceptable progress and/or until they have completed all failed course work to be promoted to their accurate grade.

Ideally, teens would work no more than twenty hours per week during the active school year, the maximum number of hours that college students are permitted to participate in work studies, and those who qualify could work full-time during summer periods.

Youth Bank Accounts and Debit/Pay Cards

To facilitate pay and for safety purposes, youth and really everyone should be paid via direct deposit into a personal bank account or via a pay card. Youth should also be encouraged to open savings accounts for college, etc.  

In Summation and Conclusion

A youth employment division at the Department of Labor (DOL) and other applicable career centers would help to get more youth employed, those specifically who are not selected from city teen employment lotteries. Again, this would significantly reduce crime and be great politics.