The unemployment rate of U.S. teens (ages 16-19) was 14.6 percent in June 2026, compared with a jobless rate of 4.2 percent for the national labor force, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The U.S. labor force participation rate for teens was 35.4 percent, or about 5.2 million workers, in June 2026.
The U.S. labor force participation rate for teens was 41.2 percent, or about 6.1 million workers, in June 2025. What accounts for this decrease in teen employment?
Are employers introducing Artificial Intelligence such as ChatGPT into the labor market and increasing the automation of the labor process? Given that teens are new entrants into the paid labor force, e.g., the last hired and first fired, if employers can save money automating entry-level work, they will.
Like automation of the cashier occupation in the retail industry, employers can and do compel customers to use their unpaid labor on self-serve devices that replace human employees. Using the uncompensated labor of customers versus paying employees, especially entry-level teens, to serve shoppers is a cost-savings for employers.
On the other hand, remote work also impacts employers’ hiring and firing decisions. The pandemic ushered in the growth of remote work as an employment option, one that allows employers to in part shift their costs, e.g., paying for office space, onto employees who work from home.
The U.S. labor force of 169.4 million had a participation rate of 61.5 percent in June 2026. The lower labor force participation rate for teens of 31.5 percent, roughly half, is due no doubt to this younger age group attending high school, compulsory across the U.S. until age 18, though some states set the requirement at ages 16 and 17.
Meanwhile, official employment figures exclude rather than include categories of workers. Who are these uncounted workers?
To count as unemployed requires that one actively seek employment. Job seekers, teens and older, who stop looking for employment after losing it fall out of the officially unemployed category.
Incarcerated individuals held in jails and jails are also uncounted in the BLS monthly employment situation report. The U.S. is the world leader in locking up its population, with racial minorities overrepresented.
“In 2019, Black Americans represented 14 percent of the total U.S. population, 33 percent of the total prison population, and 46 percent of the prison population who had already served at least 10 years,” according to the Sentencing Project. Minority overrepresentation in jails and prisons correlates with unemployment data.
Black workers for example are jobless at roughly twice the rate of white workers. The Black unemployment rate was 6.6 percent in June 2026 versus 3.6 percent for white workers.
In the meantime, expanding employment for U.S. teens is not on the radar screen of the two-party duopoly. Call that a middle finger salute to teens.
Instead, the U.S. political duopoly is focused, laser-like, on sucking up donor dollars from corporations and the wealthy. The Citizens United decision strengthened that giant sucking sound.
Movement politics can weaken that sound.
