With classes wrapped up and graduations held virtually, young job seekers are looking for opportunities. Some of the fast-rising job search terms on Indeed are for opportunities for teenagers.  Half of the top ten fastest rising search terms compared to two weeks ago contain some combination of ‘teen’ or ‘16 year old.’ 

And while terms like ‘hostess’ and ‘waitress’ have grown compared to two weeks ago, they are still far below where they were still this time last year. This is reflective of the current reopening guidelines. While restaurants and some gyms have started to reopen, they are nearly all at reduced capacity which has dampened hiring in these sectors

Table entitled “Fastest-rising job search terms on Indeed”. Table shows the top 10 by change in share of searches from May 23-June 5 compared to last year. Young job seekers are on the rise, with half of the top ten fastest rising search terms containing some combination of ‘teen’ or ‘16 year old’. Hostess, gym, lifeguard, goodwill, and waitress also make the list. Caption added post publication.

It seems that the search trend around opportunities for young people is indicative of the current coronavirus situation. Summer-related searches, like ‘summer job’ or ‘summer internship’, are far below last year’s trends. But searches containing the word ‘teen’ or ‘teenage’ are up nearly 70% compared to last year. 

This could be because coronavirus has eliminated nearly all summer activities for teenagers. Social activities have been cancelled, many camps have closed, public pools remain empty, sports remain paused and many internships have been rescinded. This will substantially change how teens allocate their time this summer. With most of society still on pause and far fewer options on how to spend their summer break, young job seekers are looking for work. 

Line graph entitled “Teen related searches well above last year”. With a vertical axis of 0 to 10,000, the graph compares 2020 vs 2019 searches containing teen-related terms per million searches from February 2020 through June 5, 2020. The graph shows searches were nearly twice as many as last year from February to mid-March. The 2020 line dipped down to last year’s numbers from mid-March through mid-April, and have steadily increased through June 5, increasing to nearly 70% more searches than last year. Caption added post publication.

Methodology

For this analysis, we looked at the top search terms on Indeed as a share of all searches from May 23 to June 5. We looked at both the change in searches versus the previous two weeks and the change versus the same period one year ago to account for possible seasonality of search patterns. We accounted for fluctuations in search behaviour by calculating the 7-day moving average of each term’s search share. Searches that included teen-related terms are those that include ‘teen’ or ‘teenage’ in the search.