How AI is shrinking the job market for teens

0:01NPR.

0:11This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong. And I'm Stephen Basaha. And it is Jobs Friday, the first one of the new year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is getting back to its regular release schedule after the disruptions from the government shutdown. Today, the BLS published numbers for December. The U.S. economy added 50 ,000 jobs and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.4%. But the BLS also revised their figures for October and November. The economy added 76 ,000 fewer jobs than previously reported. This shows that the labor market kept cooling at the end of 2025. Looking at specific industries, food service jobs were up in December, while retail jobs went down.

1:01These are both sectors where some people are getting supplanted by machines. Think fast food counter workers or cashiers. These are jobs you might associate with the economy's youngest workers, teenagers. So what does the future of teen employment look like? One California high school student has crunched the numbers. I think an AI tsunami wave is going to come regardless. And it's going to drastically change our lives. I guess the question that we're trying to answer is not how to prevent this from happening, but what to do in the face of AI.

1:35Today on the show, this enterprising teenager explains her economic research project and offers her ideas for how educators can better prepare young people for the job market.

1:52Carissa Tang's story starts with boba. Oh, bubble tea, right? Yes. Are you a big bubble tea guy? I am actually abstained of all caffeine drinks. I don't want the caffeine headaches. Oh, you are a monk, Stephen. Well, I love tarot and Carissa's go-to is matcha. What level ice do you do? I do less ice because I want them to fill it up with more with the drink. And then I do 20 % sugar. Keeping it healthy. Keeping it healthy. Yeah, yeah. Carissa is 17 years old and lives in Silicon Valley. She's a senior in high school. And one of her aunts actually owns a boba tea shop. So many of my classmates asked if I can hook them up with my aunt for a summer job.

2:34But surprisingly, she wasn't in need of any employees. And this really piqued my interest because I thought, you know, it shouldn't be too hard to get a summer job. Now, maybe your average teenager would have said, that's interesting and, you know, moved on. But Carissa, she is not average. For one thing, she and her brother designed a strategy board game called Booted while they were sick with COVID in 2022. They actually got the game manufactured and you could buy it right now online. And Carissa started volunteering as a research assistant by cold emailing George Geis. He's on the faculty at UCLA's business school.

3:06Most of us on the faculty get approached maybe at least once a month by students who want to do something with us in work. But Carissa stood out. For example, Carissa described herself as a rising junior, which is a pretty clever way to say sophomore. and her resume impressed George, so he took her on. Over the years, I've had probably over 100 research assistants, teaching assistants, most of whom are MBAs or PhDs. And I was struck by the fact that Carissa was coming back with work at a level that was as good as I've seen from much more developed and sophisticated students as far as their educational level.

3:48George also encouraged Carissa to pursue her own research project. And this brings us back to her aunt not hiring any teens for her boba shop. And I learned that it's because AI-powered kiosks were replacing the counter roles at many tea shops. So that takes out, what, two to three employees per shop. And then I looked into a bit more and saw that AI was taking over many teen jobs. For example, AI-powered self-checkout is taking over many cashier jobs. or gen AI assistants are taking over many retail salesperson's jobs. And that launched me into this research paper. Carissa set out to quantify the impact of AI on teenage jobs.

4:25And here's what she did. First, she looked up the top 10 most popular jobs for workers ages 16 to 19 based on BLS data. The number one job is cashier. Around 13 % of teens are in this role. That was my teenage job as well. Number two is restaurant server. Number three is fast food counter worker. After Carissa compiled the list of top 10 jobs, she researched AI technology that could displace those jobs. Take restaurant cooks, for example. About 5 % of working teens are cooks, according to the BLS. And Carissa learned about a cooking robot that's used by restaurants like White Castle. The robot is an automated fry station that can make french fries and chicken tenders.

5:08I would look at the current amount of units deployed for cooking robots, and then the growth rate for them, and then from there determined the number of units expected to be deployed in five years and then estimated the number of employees that each unit of AI tech will impact and then the total number of employees displaced and the total number of teen employees displaced. Carissa repeated these steps for all of the top teen jobs, including cashiers, fast food counter workers, and customer service representatives. If there's one headline to cap all of it off, It'd be that my analysis predicts a 27 percent decline in teen jobs by 2030.

5:44A 27 percent decline. It's a pretty dramatic effect. Carissa calculated that the biggest loss would be in cashier jobs. That would see a 54 percent drop as retailers replace human cashiers with digital kiosks and self-checkout stations. And this isn't just affecting teens, right? I mean, like you see middle-aged and older workers in these jobs, too. For sure. Although if you look at the median age for cashiers in the U.S., it's in the 20s. There were some bright spots in Carissa's analysis. Like some teen jobs look to be safe from AI displacement in the near future. These include restaurant hosts and cooks.

6:18Carissa says she believes this is because these jobs require interpersonal skills or more sophisticated physical movements. So like those fry robots you talked about, Stephen, they don't pose a huge threat in the short term. Chris's analysis determined that the impact on teen cooks would be minimal, at least before 2030. And one of her first jobs is probably safe, too, coaching basketball at her old middle school. But you know, an overall 27 % decline in teen jobs, that is a significant result. A recent review of research by the OECD found that kids who got work experience in school reap benefits as adults, including higher salaries.

6:56It definitely felt very applicable, but definitely a little bit fearful in the sense that, you know, how are we going to learn all these important financial literacy or social skills or life skills that we get from a job? Carissa is far from an AI Luddite. She used that technology to generate posters for an event she planned at her church. And she uses ChatGPT as a study aid at school. In my world history class, we would have to remember these times and dates and people and places from our history notes. and maybe I'm just a little bit lazy, but it was kind of a lot for me to look through these like pages upon pages of notes.

7:32So what I did instead was I would take photos of all of them, upload it to ChatGPT, and I'll have ChatGPT create an imaginative, creative story for me to remember all these terms. And on the way to school, I'll just plug in my headphones and listen to ChatGPT read the story aloud. And that'll be one way to help me study for the exam. It is very self-effacing of her to say she's a little bit lazy because she did this whole economic research project. And her 20-page paper ends with policy ideas. For example, it says educators should emphasize critical thinking skills and digital literacy over routine tasks.

8:08And that schools should make entrepreneurship part of their curriculum. She thinks this will teach students how to adapt to all these economic changes. George Geis at UCLA says he was impressed with Carissa's analytical skills and creativity. She was just not doing a doomsday type of paper. She was suggesting practical solutions as well as reflecting a certain concern about her cohort and her age. So she's not a self-absorbed teenager in the classical sense. She's very much looking outward. Now Carissa is looking forward. She's working on submitting her paper to economic journals, and she'll be graduating high school this year and wants to study business or economics in college.

8:53George wrote her a glowing recommendation letter. And while we're on the subject of jobs, Stephen, you have a new one. Yes, I do. I will be starting my new role as NPR's personal finance reporter on Monday. Big congrats and special thanks to the Gulf States newsroom for letting us borrow you for these past few months.

9:17This episode was produced by Corey Bridges with engineering by Robert Rodriguez. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Kincannon edits the show, and The Indicator is a production of NPR.