I hear a lot of jokes about teenagers and their work capabilities. People sometimes think of them as inept and lazy. Maybe there is more to the story. Most high school teachers realize that some of their students are burning the midnight oil and that they aren't spending all of their time on homework. The work force is filled with teenagers working after school in places that aren't necessarily safe.
U.S. youngsters aged 14 to 18 who work at retail and service jobs during the school year put in an average of 16 hours a week, often at jobs that are dangerous and unsupervised, a study said Monday.
The report from the University of North Carolina said some of the working conditions found in interviews with a representative sample of 928 teenage workers violated federal law.
"Teens are exposed to multiple hazards, use dangerous equipment despite federal prohibitions and work long hours during the school week," said the report published in the March issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Teenagers are sometimes unsupervised and not trained properly for the jobs that they are doing. They are just expected to hold down the fort.
Working late "suggests the potential for interference with school or sleep, as well as potential for exposure to workplace violence that is more prevalent in the retail and service sectors than in other settings," the study said.
"Many teens are performing tasks that are prohibited by current federal child labor laws. Our results also suggest gaps in both safety training and supervision of working teens because approximately one-third of the teens reported not receiving any safety training," it added.
Life is not always easy and comes at you fast. A lot of our kiddos are out there doing the best that they can.