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Summer Jobs Easier to Find This Year

By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

From The Wall Street Journal Online

May 12, 2006 - Summer job prospects for students at places ranging from amusement parks to hedge funds are looking brighter this year.

Landing a summer job, long a rite of passage for teens and college students, became more difficult in recent years, as young people had to compete for jobs with older, more-experienced workers in a weaker employment market. Now, as the nation's economy picks up steam and the unemployment rate hovers at its lowest level in nearly five years, many employers and online job sites report increased hiring this summer.

Some 59% of 16- to 24-year-olds worked last July, according to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Employment among youth had fallen significantly between 1999 and 2003, but has been creeping up over the past two summers. Overall, some 21.7 million 16- to 24-year-olds were employed last July.

The increase in summer hiring is apparent at a wide range of businesses. Accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP, for example, has hired about 2,200 college interns this year, an 18% increase from 2005. Investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is increasing its number of summer analysts by 6%. Six Flags Inc., meanwhile, expects to offer at least 1,200 new jobs this summer at its amusement parks. "Hiring is definitely up for summer jobs, and that's across the board," says Trudy Steinfeld, executive director of the Wasserman Center for Career Development at New York University.

Web sites that list summer jobs -- an increasingly popular tool for students -- are reporting large increases in postings in a wide range of occupations. One such site, SnagAJob.com, said it had about 100,000 listings in late April, a big jump from the 42,000 it posted at the same time last year. Most of the listings are in the retail and hospitality sector -- stores, theme parks, restaurants, movie theaters -- but there are also an increasing number of listings in less-traditional areas, such as health-care attendants, in-store product demonstrators and event staffers at catering and party-planning firms, says Shawn Boyer, SnagAJob.com's chief executive.

Another site geared toward young job seekers, Teens4hire.org, says that the number of employers listed on the site has jumped 20% from last year. The growth includes mainstay seasonal employers, such as parks and moving companies, as well as entry-level positions at health clinics and financial-services firms. SummerJobs.com, which currently has lots of camp and fund-raising listings, says posts increased 20% from the same time last year, while a sister site, InternJobs.com, lists 35% more positions. CoolWorks.com, which posts seasonal jobs at places like national parks and ranches, says individual job ads are up over last year by about a third.

Samantha Edwards, a 19-year-old sophomore at San Francisco State University, has benefited from the changing market. The past two years, she had applied for dozens of jobs, mainly at retailers, but rarely got a call back. "It was frustrating," says Ms. Edwards, a creative-writing major. But last month she applied for a summer photography job through an online job board and received a call back immediately. Two days later, she was hired.

A number of employers, such as investment banks and accounting firms, say they have beefed up their internship hiring for this summer -- although competition for the slots still remains fierce. At Goldman Sachs, for one, applications have increased by 26% this year. The firms anticipate continued growth and seek to generate a bigger labor pool for full-time hires once the students graduate. Last year employers said that about 36% of their interns, on average, became full-time employees, according to a survey of more than 200 companies by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

"It's a 10-week interview, an opportunity to see a person in action," says Janet Raiffa, co-head of U.S. campus recruiting at Goldman Sachs.

Many professional internship programs hire mainly juniors, but a number of big companies, such as financial-services giant Merrill Lynch & Co., are now reaching down lower into the college ranks this summer to hire more sophomores -- and even some freshmen. "It's so competitive out there, you have to build those relationships early to get in the game," says Connie Thanasoulis-Cerrachio, Merrill's chief operating officer of U.S. campus recruiting.

Also of Interest from the Career Center Annual Internships, Co-ops, Entry-level, and Summer Gigs Section

At the same time, a growing number of hedge funds and other nontraditional summer employers are showing up at campuses with internship programs for the first time this year. Gabriel Lepine, a 20-year-old junior at Brown University, applied for about 14 summer internships at investment banks, hedge funds and consulting firms. He received two offers from hedge funds, and an investment bank put him on its internship wait list.

"All in all, it resembled the college-application process," says Mr. Lepine, who had to go through multiple interviews, follow-up letters and intense networking to land his job offers. Yet most of his classmates who sought internships were able to find them, he says.

The recruiting process for many corporate summer internships begins early in the fall, so most of those posts have been filled already. Students may well have to start thinking about the next summer as soon as they finish the previous one.

People in their late teens and early 20s are likely to have a far easier time finding summer jobs than younger students. Many big employers, such as Home Depot Inc., don't hire anyone under age 18. Teens also face stiff competition for jobs from senior citizens looking for additional work, immigrants, recent college grads and laid-off adults, says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, who adds that the ability to find work varies "dramatically" by region. Overall, Mr. Sum expects things to improve this summer, based on teen employment trends so far this year.

In recent years, many students have been opting out of the job market and going to summer-school programs. Enrollment in school last July grew to 36.5% of 16- to 19-year-olds, up from just 21.9% 10 years earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And many schools now start their academic year earlier, which can be tough for employers hoping to hire workers through Labor Day weekend.

Those still looking for a job should consider positions at smaller companies and nonprofits, which may not be able to anticipate their hiring so far in advance. Technology companies may also have openings. "Nobody can get enough tech people for anything," says NYU's Ms. Steinfeld.