Summer jobs for teens and young adults...

I was reading the paper for no apparent reason just now and came across an interesting article about summer job availability.

Said article goes alone the lines that teens and college students are finding getting a job is harder than it has ever been before. The reason: more adults that have been laid off or fired from jobs because of the economy and are taking up all the positions held by teens and college students (re: McDonald's, Wal-Mart, even amusement parks). Also, summer jobs like McDonald's or other chains have even gone the distance to refuse teen and college student applications in favor of older workers. If anyone is interested it is located in the Weekender portion of the Petoskey local newspaper (Petoskey News-Review).

The point I'm trying to make: Would Cedar Point take hold in this trend? I know from talking with many people that CP has hired many more workers this season than usual. Could this hiring be attributed somewhat to the hiring of more employees that are older in age? For being a POOR college student having my employment options shaved down isn't an option I would like to face. Thank goodness I was hired!

I guess the article triggerd a thought process and I just wanted to see what people thought about the article and how it may apply to CP.

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2003 - Gemini Crew
*** This post was edited by Jacob Heller 4/26/2003 5:19:42 AM ***

In my opinion, I don't think that Cedar Point would ever follow this trend for a very simple reason: they need so many employees. While there are some older adults who work and live at the park, the majority of older employees also have a permanent residence in Sandusky or another nearby town. There are only so many older adults in the area that work at the Point; it's not as many as CP needs to be fully staffed.

College students are already used to being uprooted and shuffled around (heck, I myself move about three or four times a year...) so they don't have any qualms about driving or flying hundreds of miles away from home to live and work at an amusement park. Older adults have a spouse and maybe younger children that live with them that keep them tied to home.

I don't want to make an ageist comment, but I also think that Cedar Point needs to hire younger employees for the more physically active positions. Obviously there is a number of older folks who are in great health and could do the physically demanding job of a ride operator, for example, but all that bending and lifting is not always something that an older person can -- or wants to -- do.

I do think that if Cedar Point begins to be flooded with applications that they have more of an opportunity to pick and choose who they hire. Notice how the essay questions have changed on the applications this year. Obviously the Point is trying to find out a little bit more about what kind of people they're hiring. Like any company, they want quality employees, and the increase in applications would give them more of an opportunity to find them.

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~Lee~

Group Sales ATL '01
Group Sales TL '02
Park Admissions Zone 5 Supervisor '03
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"The greatest leaders don't take credit for their actions; they don't have to."
*** This post was edited by Lee 4/26/2003 8:49:07 PM ***

The so called unemployement problem is overstated. According to the BLR the rate for march is 5.8% The naturual rate of unemployment is considered by most legetimate economists to be 6%. Anything under that can be construed to cause "demand-pull" inflation". This indeed happend in the latter half of the 1990's in a large number of work fields.

Ok so much for the acedemic crap. Being laid off is bad!