A Cloudy Forecast for Summer Jobs

Dana is 23 years old. Dana has a summer job. She is one of the few.

Residents and businesses alike are reporting a shortage of summer jobs this year, a byproduct of a still-weak economy and a decrease in state and federal funding. For local teens and twenty-somethings, the situation is particularly bad.

"I haven't really started looking for something full-time because I know how hard it's going to be," said Dana, who declined to provide her last name. "I have a lot of friends who are doing things they don't want to be doing because they have to- kids with accounting degrees baby-sitting. It kinda hurts."

Dana recently graduated from college with a degree in Business Administration. So what is she doing this summer?

"Bartending pays the bills," she said.

The trouble is, there are a lot of bills. Dana has been out of school for three months and has already had to start repaying her student loans. She is not alone in her plight.

Natalia Pylypyszy, a 19-year-old West Hartford native, . She had only three interviews, none of which panned out.

Reuters is reporting that the teen summer employment rate could hit a post-World-War-II low this summer of 25 to 27 percent. That means three out of every for teens across the country would be unemployed.

By comparison, the unemployment rate for Connecticut teens in 2010 was 21.9 percent, and only 18.8 percent the year before that. 

"We have a lot of our staffing needs already in place," said Michele, 30, the manager of a popular Danbury-area business. "We have lots of kids coming in looking, and we take their applications. But the truth is that we're just keeping them on file for over the holidays."

Michele said she knew the same was true for many other stores in the area, citing slow retail business and cutbacks on staffing hours as factors making the trend worse.

Overall, Connecticut's unemployment rate for April was 9.1 percent, just over the national average of 9 percent. 

So what's a summer job seeker to do?

"Keep your head held high," Dana said. "It'll turn around eventually."