Scooping ice cream, lifeguarding swimming pools, and restocking retail stores during the summer has long been teenagers’ rite of passage. For most, it’s the first time they build real-world skills and earn their own pocket change. But now, teens are up against the worst summer job market since the Great Recession. Landing a job at the back of a mom-and-pop shop feels almost as hard as scoring a full-time corporate role.
“I didn’t know it was going to be this hard. I thought it was going to be quite easy. And with all the applications I sent through, I feel a bit discouraged,” Simon Chow, a 17-year-old who spent months applying to dozens of summer gigs, tells Fortune. “I’m looking everywhere, and I’ll take anything at this point.”
Around 790,000 jobs in May, June, and July of this year opened up for teenagers—down from around 801,000 gigs from 2025—according to a recent report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. And if the study’s prediction plays out, this stretch of summer would mark the lowest teen hiring since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the data. Beyond the previous year, the only other time this figure dropped to a low this concerning was in 2010 (960,000), when the U.S. was reeling from the Great Recession.
Now, teenagers are having to get crafty to land their minimum-wage summer gigs. Like many job seekers, they’re playing the numbers game, sending out dozens of applications only to be ghosted. Others are employing the old-fashioned strategy deployed by their parents, strutting up to storefronts with resume in hand and elevator pitch memorized. And after months of searching, some tough realities have become clear: landing a seasonal job in this market can require connections, experience, and the guts to put themselves out there.
Teenagers across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., tell Fortune this year’s summer job market has been miserable—but some are finding a way in.
Teens are applying to dozens of jobs and getting outright ghosted
The next generation of workers are trying everything in the book, and still coming up short.
Chow, a teenager from Montreal, Canada, has made it his mission to squeeze in some summer work before attending Vanier College this fall. Since graduating high school in June, Chow says he applied to over 50 different seasonal jobs, but was ghosted and rejected at every turn.
The local restaurants and cafes he went into didn’t have any work to offer; emails sent out to employers were met with radio silence; even applications to volunteer gigs didn’t get any response back. Chow looked everywhere—community centers, food kitchens, thrift stores, and strawberry farms—but struggled to get anyone’s attention.
“The competition did get more competitive. Companies are looking for more experienced people,” Chow says. “Some of my friends do have jobs, but I think it’s because they have better connections…so I feel like it’s easier for them to get jobs.
This week, Chow scored a summer job as a busboy after months of relentless applying. His job training officially begins next week, and at the end of August, he’ll head off to college with his eye on veterinary medicine.
Samantha Rosaforte, a 19-year-old from Carmel, New York, can relate to the struggle. Last fall, she began her hunt for marketing or communications gigs in New York City, prowling through postings on LinkedIn and Indeed. In total, she estimates she applied to around 80 summer jobs. Nearly all of them ghosted her, and few took the time to even send out rejections. By the middle of April, she said she had “lost all hope completely” as the window for seasonal work was coming to a close.
“I started feeling like I’m not good enough for any company, because I can’t even get past the resume stage,” Rosaforte tells Fortune. “I felt so helpless, like I have nothing. I don’t know what else to do.”
Then, the teen got a glimmer of hope: an email from a HelloFresh recruiter popped up in her inbox, responding back about a social media internship. Three hiring rounds later, she finally landed a summer job and has one week left in the 10-week gig before heading into her senior year at Clemson University. Reflecting back on the crushing job hunt she was put through, she plans to apply for entry-level jobs even earlier while wrapping up her bachelor’s.
Estelle Keeber, a digital marketing entrepreneur in the U.K., says that her two sons have also been up against a rocky summer job market. Her eldest teen, 17-year-old Jed, has looked for months and applied to dozens of manual jobs like construction, with no luck so far. And her 15-year-old, Obi, had to pivot after his online search was a dud.
Keeber says it can be “quite soul destroying” for them to look so long for a low-level job. Now, just like his mother, her youngest has turned to entrepreneurship to create work for himself.
“Here in the U.K., 10 years ago, you could have a Saturday job [as a young teen],” Keeber tells Fortune. “Now, because of health and safety, because of insurance, there’s that barrier in the way as well to stop them from getting any sort of experience.”
Teens are turning to old-fashioned tactics and entrepreneurship to make summer coin
Keeber’s eldest son is still pounding the pavement looking for work as employers pull back entry-level hiring. Meanwhile, her youngest built his own local operation. Obi has been repairing bikes around his area for about two years to earn some pocket money; he also does garden landscaping for a handful of homes every week, earning around £20 to £50 ($27 to $67.50) per visit. Keeber says he makes around £100 ($135) working up to 15 hours weekly.
Other teens are taking matters into their own hands by making their case in-person and leveraging local work programs.
Luke Della Valle, an 18-year-old from Westport, Connecticut, earns $18 an hour at kid’s hair salon Sharkey’s sweeping the floors and helping out hairstylists. And he landed the gig the old-fashioned way: walking to the front counter, and simply asking.
While the handful of digital applications he sent out never got responses, asking face-to-face ultimately paid off, as it’s “a lot easier to turn people down if it’s online instead of in person.” However, Della Valle says most “completely shut me down” when asking for seasonal work as many wanted someone with experience who would stick around, even for minimum wage roles.
And Sophia Smith, a rising junior in high school, also got her job at Ralph’s Famous Italian Ices by simply asking in-person.
The 15-year-old is actually holding down two jobs this summer; for several weeks she participates in New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program, which is available to young people aged 14 to 24 across the five boroughs.
The Staten Island teen earns around $700 from the program, which entails working six hours a day, twice per week—including one day at the College of Staten Island. On the side, Smith blends milkshakes and scoops frozen confections for around $17 an hour, one day a week.
It took some grit to get there. She didn’t have much luck calling up pizzerias or walking into coffee shops. But being persistent helped her secure her “dream” summer job; plus, being in the city of opportunity helped boost her odds.
“You really have to go for it, just like I did…it is a little bit harder for us. You have to go in yourself,” Smith tells Fortune. “Don’t even say anything. Just ask, ‘Are you guys hiring?’ …And the number one rule is stay in touch with them.”