Mall of America

Do you drop your kids off at the mall for a little post Turkey Day shopping or take them with you but let them go off on their own to browse the holiday sales?

If you shop at the Mall of America, the nation’s largest mall, you won’t be able to do that this year during peak holiday shopping times if your children are 15 or younger.

After a chair-throwing meleeinvolving unruly young people during Christmas week last year, the Bloomington, Minn., mall is extending its parental escort policy this year, the Pioneer Press reported this week.

The policy, which requires kids under 16 to be accompanied by someone 21 or older on Fridays and Saturdays after 4 p.m., will be in effect during mall hours on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and from the day after Christmas until New Year’s Eve. The mall has had the weekend policy since 1996.

The chair-throwing incident, which was caught on video and posted online, wasn’t the primary reason for cracking down on unaccompanied young shoppers, said Dan Jasper, the mall’s vice president of public relations, who cited a record number of shoppers last year on Black Friday.

“We had never opened at midnight on Black Friday prior to last year,” he told TODAY Moms. “We had 217,000 people that day, including some unaccompanied kids who are 14, 15. Just for the safety of everyone, we expanded the policy.”

“The reason behind it is to make sure this is a safe environment,” he said.

While some who weighed in on the TODAY MOMS Facebook page supported the move, others said it was wrong to keep well-behaved young teens from shopping without a grownup.

“I think it is unfair to all teens to be treated the same as they are not,” wrote Judie Beford. “There are a lot of good ones and I am proud of them.”

“Not all teens are disrespectful and troublemakers like these kids clearly are,” Pamela Chapman wrote. “In fact, it's been my experience that most are good kids.”

Irene Miscia Martin suggested the mall beef up its security. “Don't make one bad apple spoil it for all the good ones,” she wrote. “We have wonderful teens in our family that love to shop and that would be just wrong.”

Some thought the extended ban on younger kids shopping alone or with friends could hurt sales.

“I think they will be hurting themselves because the thousands of well behaved teens still need presents for their family members,” wrote Jessica Brown.

But Jasper said the policy has helped sales, by encouraging families to shop together.

“Retailers love the policy,” he said. “When we first implemented it, there were concerns that sales would drop. But sales increased following the implementation and remain strong. It encourages more families to come out with their kids and sales went up.”

At a meeting a month ago to discuss holiday shopping, Jasper said the policy was discussed.  “Every single tenant was thrilled because they know it’s a policy that keeps everyone safe and leads to increased sales,” he said.

The mall first started its policy after officials noticed that parents were leaving children as young as 10 at the megamall.

“Families were dropping off their kids and using Mall of America as a babysitter,” Jasper said. “That’s just not safe for everybody.”

Now, he said, the policy gets enforced a handful of times each weekend.
 

Cary Anne Holton Photography

Megan Tessmer

Megan Tessmer loves her new summer job as a carhop waitress at Sonic Drive-In in Oklahoma City, and she’s happy she was able to find the gig easily despite the grim job market.

“This was the second place I drove by,” said Tessmer, who will be returning to school at the University of Central Oklahoma in the fall to study chemistry. “We’re actually still hiring.”

The job market for temporary summer jobs for high school and college students has yet to revive to pre-recessionary levels, but the picture is brighter than many think it is, depending on the industry. And for those who’ve remained on the sidelines because of dire forecasts, it isn’t too late to score a temporary gig as July, the typical peak for summer hiring, approaches.

There are still jobs available for the hot days ahead, and many of the openings are in clothing stores, manufacturing and fast food outlets.

During the last two summers, Sonic has increased its overall hiring, said Anita Vanderveer, the vice president of people for the company.

“We are hiring,” she said, for everything from servers to positions at the company’s headquarters. “We have a clear strategy to ramp up prior to summer, but we’re always looking for people.”

Indeed, there are tens of thousands of jobs still available on Summer Jobs+, a government program set up earlier this year to help low-income youths get jobs this summer, said Jason Kuruvilla, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor. 

Many companies went into the summer employment season ready to hire. Nearly 30 percent of employers had planned to hire workers this summer, up from 21 percent last year, according to a May CareerBuilder forecast. And among the industries looking to add summer jobs, manufacturing topped the list with 45 percent, followed by hospitality with 44 percent, retail with 34 percent and finance at 31 percent.

"Confidence is up among the employers we most closely associate with summer hiring,” said Brent Rasmussen, president of CareerBuilder North America.

Last month, a host of sectors typically related to summer hiring, saw increases in job openings including clothing stores and eating establishments, according to jobs website Snagajob.

“Even though May’s job numbers from the BLS were disappointing overall, there were bright spots in what are considered typical areas for seasonal employment,” said Courtney Moyer, a spokeswoman for Snagajob.

The overall unemployment rate for May was still a disappointing 8.2 percent, with few increases in most industries, other than health care, transportation and warehouses, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But there have been other pockets of opportunities for temporary summer work, Moyer pointed out, “clothing stores, food and beverage stores and restaurants all had gains. Government numbers also showed that 4.39 million teens ages 16 to 19 were employed in May (seasonally adjusted), which is an improvement over last year’s 4.26 million, a 3 percent increase. Also, already this season teens are doing better than last year’s peak summer employment, which typically comes in July and was also recorded at 4.26 million.”

Don’t expect to get rich on the popular summer jobs though. According to Snagajob, retail sales jobs pay about $12 an hour and cashier positions at food outlets pay $9.73.

If you are just starting your summer job search, Moyer offered some tips:

• Young people cannot apply to five jobs and think that that’s going to be enough. Snagajob recommends, especially at this point in the season, that seasonal job seekers put in upwards of 25 applications. Consider areas that are strong in seasonal hiring such as retail, restaurants and leisure/arts and entertainment.
• While you should apply to a job following a company’s preferred procedure – online, paper application, etc. – we recommend following up in person no later than a week after applying.
• Use referrals. Help yourself get out of the application pile by using a personal connection. Maybe you have a friend who has already been hired by a company who can ask that a manager review your application. Lean on parents, friends and neighbors by asking them if they know of any companies that are still hiring.

Bottom line, Moyer stressed, “there is hope.”

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• Video: Happy merry! Stores get ready for Christmas
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Retailers and financial institutions, take note: Tomorrow’s customers are wary of you.

A new poll finds that more than 7 in 10 teens believe businesses try to trick them into spending more than they should. In addition, 6 in 10 think credit card companies entice people into taking on more debt than they can handle.

They don’t seem to be big fans of Wall Street, either. Only about one-fourth of the teens polled disagreed with this statement: “The stock market is rigged mostly to benefit greedy Wall Street bankers.”

The University of Arizona commissioned The Financial Literacy Group to poll nearly 900 high school students in 18 high schools for the survey.

In an e-mail, the Financial Literacy Group said that although it had not previously polled teens on their perceptions of financial institutions, the fact that adults’ views of banks have declined in recent years leads them to believe the financial crisis and recession has had some effect on the teens’ attitudes as well.

The survey also showed that the kids could stand to learn a bit more about personal finance.

More than half of the students surveyed didn’t realize that a high credit score is better than a low credit score, and the vast majority also weren’t aware that owning company stock is riskier than government bonds.

Anika Anand writes: There may be reason for teens to be optimistic about the summer job market, despite all the gloomy predictions of young people spending their summer playing video games in the basement all day, according to a new report by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.

The number of 16- to 19-year-olds who were employed in May increased by 71,000 from the previous month, according to the most recent non-seasonally adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That compares to an increase of just 6,000 jobs added from April to May of last year.

Although the number of jobs added in May is significantly less than the 125,000 new teen jobs that have been added in May, on average, over the past 10 years, the early bump could be enough to boost confidence that more teens than expected will land a job in June.

But even if there is a bump in June’s job numbers, we may still be playing catch-up. About 4,177,000 teens were employed in May, according to the non-seasonally adjusted BLS numbers. That compares to 4,336,000 who were employed at the same time last year. 

Nearly one in four teens who wants a job doesn’t have one, according to the BLS. This summer teens will have to compete with out-of-work adults whose jobs are increasingly threatened by the recession.

Teen employment is the lowest it has been since the end of World War II, according to research from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northern University.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds, seasonally adjusted.

Here’s what we know about summer jobs: The pay is low, the work can be unrewarding and, all too often, there's an unflattering uniform involved.

Oh, and they're really, really hard to find.

The unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds is always higher than other age groups, but things have been especially tough these last few years.

Nearly one in four teens who want to work don't have a job, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although the unemployment rate for that age group has improved slightly in recent months, it remains far above the overall unemployment rate of 8.9 percent.

The situation is much worse for African-American teens, who faced an unemployment rate of 38.4 percent in February. Unemployment for black teens has spiked close to 50 percent twice in the past couple of years.

Even though the overall job market is improving, the summer job market for teens is still expected to be quite difficult. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said summer hiring last year was the worst since 1949, and things aren't expected to be much better this year.