The teen employment forecast for 2022 from the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget (DTMB) has been released and it shows a favorable labor market for teens to enter as they look to find summer positions.
In the first quarter of 2022, Michigan’s unemployment rate was 4.7% which is comparable to historical lows and the number of job openings soared. Entry-level positions requiring littler experience or training have the strongest demand. DTMB says this trend is expected to continue into the summer months.
“An additional 35,000 to 40,000 teenagers are forecasted to join Michigan’s workforce this summer,” said Wayne Rourke, associate director of the Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives. “If the current demand for workers remains strong, many of these teens will find a job. In 2022, Michigan can expect high participation and low unemployment for teenagers compared to previous summers.”
There are just over 500,000 teens ages 16 to 19 this year, and over half of them are expected to join the labor market this summer. The forecast of this summer’s labor force of 239,000 is impoved over the pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021, but it still isn’t as high as the years prior to that.
While the population of Michigan teens in the labor market is forecasted to be high, the population of teens 16 to 19 participating in the market has declined every year since 2008 where it peaked at 614,000.
The forecast is similar to the recent summers of 2018, 2019 and 2021. Those years had teen summer unemployment rates between 10% and 12% and there was between 200,000 and 225,000 teens that held jobs. This summer, DTMB is predicting the teen unemployment rate to be 10.1% and to have 214,000 teens working this summer.
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