{"id":18348,"date":"2023-05-26T14:08:08","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T18:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=18348"},"modified":"2026-02-17T12:07:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T17:07:22","slug":"the-best-life-lesson-for-a-teen-is-a-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/26\/the-best-life-lesson-for-a-teen-is-a-job\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Life Lesson for a Teen Is a Job"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header \">\n<h1 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/articles\/best-life-lesson-for-teen-is-job\/\">The Best Life Lesson for a Teen Is a Job\u00a0<\/a><\/h1>\n<div class=\"entry-meta\">By <span class=\"posted-by vcard author\"><a class=\"url fn n\" title=\"View all posts by James Bovard\" href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/author\/james-bovard\/\" rel=\"author\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"multiple_authors_guest_author_avatar avatar\" src=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/James-Bovard-768x768-1.jpeg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/James-Bovard-768x768-1.jpeg\" alt=\"James Bovard\" width=\"45\" height=\"45\" \/><span class=\"author-name\">James Bovard<\/span><\/a> <\/span> \u00a0 <span class=\"posted-on\"><span class=\"published\"> May 26, 2023\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Screenshot-2022-12-31-at-08-34-12-brownstone-institute-logo-Google-Search.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-17877\" src=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Screenshot-2022-12-31-at-08-34-12-brownstone-institute-logo-Google-Search.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"95\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Screenshot-2022-12-31-at-08-34-12-brownstone-institute-logo-Google-Search.png 788w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Screenshot-2022-12-31-at-08-34-12-brownstone-institute-logo-Google-Search-150x72.png 150w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Screenshot-2022-12-31-at-08-34-12-brownstone-institute-logo-Google-Search-768x367.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/cybergedeon-men-at-work-text.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-18349\" src=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/cybergedeon-men-at-work-text-684x800.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"399\" height=\"467\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/cybergedeon-men-at-work-text-684x800.jpg 684w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/cybergedeon-men-at-work-text-876x1024.jpg 876w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/cybergedeon-men-at-work-text-128x150.jpg 128w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/cybergedeon-men-at-work-text-768x898.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/cybergedeon-men-at-work-text.jpg 1111w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 399px) 100vw, 399px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content clear\">\n<div id=\"playht-iframe-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"playht-iframe-player\" class=\"playht-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/play.ht\/embed\/?article_url=https:\/\/brownstone.org\/?p=23199&amp;voice=en-US-GuyNeural&amp;appId=XCST8pha_y_&amp;trans_id=-NWO0KhHFL6IaTjMEoxV\" width=\"100%\" height=\"90px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-voice=\"en-US-GuyNeural\" data-appid=\"XCST8pha_y_\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/div>\n<div class=\"heateorSssClear\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"heateor_sss_sharing_container heateor_sss_horizontal_sharing\" data-heateor-sss-href=\"https:\/\/brownstone.org\/articles\/best-life-lesson-for-teen-is-job\/\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">During the Covid debacle, kids were locked out of school or otherwise condemned to an inferior Zoom education for up to two years. What were the alternatives? Unfortunately, since the New Deal, the federal government has severely restricted teenagers\u2019 opportunities for gainful employment. But new evidence proves that keeping kids out of work doesn\u2019t keep them out of mental health trouble.<\/p>\n<p>Yet suggesting that kids take a job has become controversial in recent years. It is easy to find expert lists on the dangers of teenage employment. Evolve Treatment Center, a California therapy chain for teenagers, recently listed the <a href=\"https:\/\/evolvetreatment.com\/blog\/pros-cons-teenage-jobs\/\">possible \u201ccons\u201d of work<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jobs can add stress to a child\u2019s life.<\/li>\n<li>Jobs can expose kids to people and situations they might not be ready for.<\/li>\n<li>A teen working a job might feel like childhood is ending too soon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But stress is a natural part of life. <strong>Dealing with strange characters or ornery bosses can speedily teach kids far more than they learn from a droning public school teacher. And the sooner childhood ends, the sooner young adults can experience independence \u2013 one of the great propellants of personal growth.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When I came of age in the 1970s, nothing was more natural than seeking to earn a few bucks after school or during the summer.<strong> I was terminally bored in high school and jobs provided one of the few legal stimulants I found in those years.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thanks to federal labor law, I was effectively banned from non-agricultural work before I turned 16. For two summers, I worked at a peach orchard five days a week, almost ten hours a day, pocketing $1.40 an hour and all the peach fuzz I took home on my neck and arms. Plus, there was no entertainment surcharge for the snakes I encountered in trees while a heavy metal bucket of peaches swung from my neck.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, that gig was good preparation for my journalism career since I was always being cussed by the foreman. He was a retired 20-year Army drill sergeant who was always snarling, always smoking, and always coughing. The foreman never explained how to do a task since he preferred vehemently cussing you afterwards for doing it wrong. \u201cWhat-da-hell\u2019s-wrong-with-you-Red?\u201d quickly became his standard refrain.<\/p>\n<p>No one who worked in that orchard was ever voted \u201cMost Likely to Succeed.\u201d But one co-worker provided me with a lifetime of philosophical inspiration, more or less. Albert, a lean 35-year-old who always greased his black hair straight back, had survived plenty of whiskey-induced crashes on life\u2019s roller coaster.<\/p>\n<p>Back in those days, young folks were browbeaten to think positively about institutions that domineered their lives (such as military conscription). Albert was a novelty in my experience: a good-natured person who perpetually scoffed.\u00a0 Albert\u2019s reaction to almost everything in life consisted of two phrases: \u201cThat really burns my ass!\u201d or \u201cNo Shit!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After I turned 16, I worked one summer with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/amp\/articles\/SB10001424052702304259304576375430412285872\">Virginia Highway Department<\/a>. As a flag man, I held up traffic while highway employees idled away the hours. On hot days in the back part of the county, drivers sometimes tossed me a cold beer as they passed by. Nowadays, such acts of mercy might spark an indictment. The best part of the job was wielding a chainsaw\u2014another experience that came in handy for my future career.<\/p>\n<p>I did \u201croadkill ride-alongs\u201d with Bud, an amiable, jelly-bellied truck driver who was always chewing the cheapest, nastiest ceegar ever made\u2014Swisher Sweets. The cigars I smoked cost a nickel more than Bud\u2019s, but I tried not to put on airs around him.<\/p>\n<p>We were supposed to dig a hole to bury any dead animal along the road. This could take half an hour or longer. Bud\u2019s approach was more efficient. We would get our shovels firmly under the animal\u2014wait until no cars were passing by\u2014and then heave the carcass into the bushes. It was important not to let the job crowd the time available for smoking.<\/p>\n<p>I was assigned to a crew that might have been the biggest slackers south of the Potomac and east of the Alleghenies. Working slowly to slipshod standards was their code of honor. Anyone who worked harder was viewed as a nuisance, if not a menace.<\/p>\n<p>The most important thing I learned from that crew was how not to shovel. Any Yuk-a-Puk can grunt and heave material from Spot A to Spot B. It takes practice and savvy to turn a mule-like activity into an art.<\/p>\n<p>To not shovel right, the shovel handle should rest above the belt buckle while one leans slightly forward. It\u2019s important not to have both hands in your pockets while leaning, since that could prevent onlookers from recognizing \u201cWork-in-Progress.\u201d The key is to appear to be studiously calculating where your next burst of effort will provide maximum returns for the task.<\/p>\n<p>One of this crew\u2019s tasks that summer was to build a new road. The assistant crew foreman was indignant: \u201cWhy does the state government have us do this? Private businesses could build the road much more efficiently, and cheaper, too.\u201d I was puzzled by his comment, but by the end of the summer I heartily agreed. The Highway Department could not competently organize anything more complex than painting stripes in the middle of a road. Even the placement of highway direction signs was routinely botched.<\/p>\n<p>While I easily acclimated to government work lethargy, I was pure hustle on Friday nights unloading trucks full of boxes of old books at a local bindery. That gig paid a flat rate, in cash, that usually worked out to double or triple the Highway Department wage.<\/p>\n<p>The goal with the Highway Department was to conserve energy, while the goal at the book bindery was to conserve time\u2014to finish as quickly as possible and move on to weekend mischief. <strong>With government work, time routinely acquired a negative value\u2014something to be killed.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The key thing kids must learn from their first jobs is to produce enough value that someone will voluntarily pay them a wage. I worked plenty of jobs in my teen years \u2013 baling hay, cutting lawns, and hustling on construction sites. I knew I\u2019d need to pay my own way in life and those jobs got me in the habit of saving early and often.<\/p>\n<p>But according to today\u2019s conventional wisdom, teenagers should not be put at risk in any situation where they might harm themselves. The enemies of teenage employment rarely admit how the government\u2019s \u201cfixes\u201d routinely do more harm than good. My experience with the highway department helped me quickly recognize the perils of government employment and training programs.<\/p>\n<p>Those programs have been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/amp\/articles\/SB10001424053111904332804576538361788872004\">spectacularly failing for more than<\/a> half a century. In 1969, the General Accounting Office (GAO) condemned federal summer jobs programs because youth \u201cregressed in their conception of what should reasonably be required in return for wages paid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 1979, GAO reported that the vast majority of urban teens in the program \u201cwere exposed to a worksite where good work habits were not learned or reinforced, or realistic ideas on expectations in the real world of work were not fostered.\u201d In 1980, Vice President Mondale\u2019s Task Force on Youth Unemployment reported, \u201cPrivate employment experience is deemed far more attractive to prospective employers than public work\u201d because of the bad habits and attitudes spurred by government programs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cMake work\u201d and \u201cfake work\u201d are a grave disservice to young peopl<\/strong>e. But the same problems permeated programs <a href=\"https:\/\/www.barrons.com\/articles\/SB124786945516260367\">in the Obama era<\/a>. In Boston, federally-subsidized summer job workers donned puppets to greet visitors to an aquarium. In Laurel, Maryland, \u201cMayor\u2019s Summer Jobs\u201d participants put in time serving as a \u201cbuilding escort.\u201d In Washington, D.C., kids were paid to diddle with \u201cschoolyard butterfly habitats\u201d and littered the streets with leaflets about the Green Summer Job Corps. In Florida, subsidized summer job participants \u201cpracticed firm handshakes to ensure that employers quickly understand their serious intent to work,\u201d the <em>Orlando Sentinel<\/em> reported. And folks wonder why so many young people cannot comprehend the meaning of \u201cwork.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cosseting kids has been a jobs program for social workers but a disaster for the supposed beneficiaries.<\/strong> Teen labor force participation (for ages 16 to 19) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/blog\/up-front\/2019\/07\/02\/all-school-and-no-work-becoming-the-norm-for-american-teens\/\">declined from 58 percent<\/a> in 1979 to 42 percent in 2004 and roughly 35 percent in 2018. It\u2019s not like, instead of finding a job, kids stay home and read Shakespeare, master Algebra, or learn to code.<\/p>\n<p>As teens became less engaged in society via work, mental health problems became far more prevalent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in \u201cthe 10 years leading up to the pandemic, feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness\u2014as well as suicidal thoughts and behaviors\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.apa.org\/monitor\/2023\/01\/trends-improving-youth-mental-health\">increased by about 40 percent<\/a> among young people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The troubled teen years are producing dark harvests on campus<\/strong>.\u00a0 Between 2008 and 2019, the number of undergraduate students diagnosed with anxiety increased by 134 percent, 106 percent for depression, 57 percent for bipolar disorder, 72 percent for ADHD, 67 percent for schizophrenia, and 100 percent for anorexia, according to the National College Health Assessment.<\/p>\n<p>Those rates are much worse post-pandemic. As psychiatrist Thomas Szasz observed, \u201cThe greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic \u2013 in short, the closest thing to a <a href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/15\/thomas-szasz-born-100-years-ago-today\/\">genuine panacea<\/a> \u2013 known to medical science is work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those who fret about the dangers that teens face on the job need to recognize the \u201copportunity cost\u201d of young adults perpetuating their childhood and their dependence. Sure, there are perils in the workplace. <strong>But as Thoreau wisely observed, \u201cA man sits as many risks as he runs.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>** Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pixabay.com\">Pixabay<\/a> for the royalty-free image.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Best Life Lesson for a Teen Is a Job\u00a0 By James Bovard \u00a0 May 26, 2023\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 During the Covid debacle, kids were locked out of school or otherwise condemned to an inferior Zoom education for up to two years. What were the alternatives? Unfortunately, since the New Deal, the federal government has severely restricted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2349,3761,3755,3760,1897,3758,2313,3757,3756,3759,1600,3754],"class_list":["post-18348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-covid","tag-incentives","tag-jobs","tag-lazy","tag-mental-illness","tag-no-shit","tag-pandemic","tag-peach-orchard","tag-teenagers","tag-virginia-highway","tag-virginia-highway-department","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Best Life Lesson for a Teen Is a Job - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jobs are one of the best experience for teenagers, propelling their growth &amp; independence\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/26\/the-best-life-lesson-for-a-teen-is-a-job\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Best Life Lesson for a Teen Is a Job - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism &amp; Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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