Seasonal Jobs Become Hard to Fill : Fewer Teens, More Work Put Pressure on Wages

Fifteen years ago, Sea World’s employment office was swamped with 10 applications for each part-time job opening. Occasionally, the aquatic park in Mission Bay ran newspaper advertisements to drum up applicants. But most part-timers were culled from walk-ins who approached Sea World for seasonal employment.

Today, the park’s applicant-to-job ratio has tumbled to just three applications for each part-time job, and Sea World’s personnel office is scrambling to attract and retain qualified part-time help.

Like most employers around San Diego County, the popular attraction, which relies heavily upon part-time help, is being pinched by a shortage of teen-agers.

‘No Immediate Solution’

Nationwide, “there are fewer kids and more jobs to be filled, and there’s no immediate solution,” according to N. Bruce Ferris, Maxwell Laboratories’ personnel manager, who co-founded the Compensation Practices Assn. of San Diego, which tracks hiring and compensation trends in the county.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, the number of 16-to-19-year-olds has declined dramatically during recent years, and will not increase significantly until the late 1990s. There were just 8 million teens available to work during 1986, down from 10 million in 1979.

The teen shortage has hit particularly hard in Southern California, where a wave of part-time jobs has been created by explosive growth in the fast-food, entertainment and retail sectors.

To address the part-time employee shortage, Sea World has given serious thought to increasing its minimum hourly wage of $4.25 to about $5, even though the state-mandated hourly minimum will remain at $4.25.

Advertising for Help

It also has become a regular exhibitor at local job fairs, and it recently ran radio advertisements to draw applications. Sea World also is readying television commercials to be broadcast on MTV, the music video channel popular with teen-agers and young adults.

The shortage is equally dramatic at San Diego’s other major tourist attractions.

To remedy a looming shortage of entry-level employees, the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park in December raised base hourly wages to $5.15, nearly a dollar above the state-mandated minimum. (The increase was in part to counter-balance dues paid to the Teamsters Union, which represents both full-time and part-time employees at the zoo and Wild Animal Park near Escondido.)

This spring, when applications were slow to accumulate, the zoo produced its first-ever job fair to draw enough employees to serve during this summer’s tourist season.

The job fair, newspaper advertisements and word of mouth generated a wave of applications, and the jointly operated parks now have an ample supply of resumes, according to JoDean Parrish, the zoo’s employment coordinator.

“We’ve been aware of this trend for some time,” said Penny Masters, Sea World’s vice president of personnel. “There is a shrinking teen-age labor market that is not going to reverse itself until the late 1990s. People are just not available.”

The shortage was created by a decrease in the nation’s birth rate. “An astronomical 48% of baby boomers had no kids,” Masters said. “Another 20% had just one child, so the number of teens available to work has shrunk drastically.”

There is a solution on the horizon: A now-developing baby boom that could rival the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s eventually will eliminate the shortage. But those new workers won’t be old enough to flip hamburgers, sell amusement park souvenirs or stock grocery store shelves until the mid-to-late 1990s.

“On a scale from 1 to 10, I’d put (the young adult labor shortage) right up there with the other 10s,” said Tom Vincent, general manager of the San Diego Princess and vice president of the San Diego Hotel & Motel Assn. “Every year, we’ve got to advertise harder for entry-level employees.”

Some companies have maintained an ample pool of potential part-time employees. Nordstrom’s San Diego stores, for example, “haven’t had a problem” finding part-time help to meet staffing needs during special sales, according to San Diego-based spokeswoman Marie Joyce. Nordstrom declined to comment on how it attracts part-time employees.

But, for most employees, “demographics are changing our work force,” according to Janice Sheek, a Los Angeles-based human resources manager for San Diego-based Foodmaker, which operates the Jack in the Box restaurant chain. When Sheek, a 16-year Foodmaker veteran, began working in employee relations, “it was a matter of people coming to us . . . there was a ready supply of employees who typically sought out work themselves.” Typically, those potential employees were high school students or recent high school graduates.

Unfortunately for employers, high school students generally “are being more selective now” in the jobs that they will take, according to Paul Sanford,a career counselor at Kearny and Patrick Henry high schools in San Diego.

“I’m looking at a job board with 45 (openings) on it right now,” Sanford said. “I can’t even begin to fill all of them, and I’m always looking at big signs,” he said of notices on windows at local fast-food restaurants.

Although Sanford is able to place many youths in entry-level jobs offering $4.25 an hour, “more and more they’re back in three or four months saying, ‘I want another job in anything but fast food.’ ”

Employers have responded to the shortage of teen-agers by broadening their recruiting efforts to encompass a greater number of non-traditional employees, including minorities, the handicapped and retirees.

‘Very Aggressive Training’

Sometimes that requires “very aggressive training and customer service programs” for newly hired employees, who “may not have the skills to go out and succeed,” Masters said.

Since training is expensive, employers are using a wide variety of techniques, including benefits packages, to bolster retention rates.

Although more benefits increase operating costs, employers often find them to be cheaper than advertising for new employees who, in many cases, will need extensive training.

“Minimum wage people will jump ship for another nickel because they need that nickel,” Vincent said. “If I have to take out one advertisement, that quickly turns into a whole lot of nickels.”

Similarly, Sea World offers inducements designed to retain its part-time work force. But rather than health or dental care, Sea World employees choose from discounted movie tickets, free haircuts, merchandise sales and in-park discounts. Sea World also makes partial tuition payments and grants textbook allowances for students who remain on its payroll.

Increasingly, however, employers are using flexible scheduling, a practice that “in the past was a no-no,” Sheek said. “We’re far more flexible than we used to be,” Sheek added.

And, employers are turning to older workers to fill slots previously filled by teens. However, some employers wonder if Southern California’s older, more experienced workers can--or want to--pick up the slack.

“We’re aggressively recruiting in the senior market,” Masters said. “But, to be truthful, we’re not having the success that we’re having in our (Orlando) Florida market. Maybe seniors in California are slightly more affluent.”

Jack in the Box restaurant managers are still recruiting teen-agers, but they also are seeking older workers, including retirees. “Our managers need to be more creative in their recruiting strategy,” according to Sheek.

A decade ago, Jack in the Box used almost exclusively older teen-agers to fill its part-time needs. But today, the part-time work force is older.

However, young adults are hesitant to take many entry-level jobs because they “just can’t make it on $4.25 an hour,” complained Mike Gallo, 25, who, since Easter, has worked part-time at a retail booth at the Zoo. Gallo, who also works part-time at a McDonald’s restaurant and operates his own business, argued that young adults can “never afford to work for $4.25 . . . unless they’re living at home with their parents.”

Similarly, Debbie Daniel, 24, who moved to San Diego several months ago from Fresno, was ecstatic to find a higher-paying job at the zoo. But Daniel, who described her retail job there as “wonderful,” acknowledged that she took the part-time job only because she has savings to fall back upon.

Daniel, who in the past has worked as a waitress, said that she would “never again” work at a fast-food restaurant. “You hardly ever get raises,” she complained. At the zoo, her hourly wage already has increased slightly, to $5.29.

Increasingly, younger workers simply cannot--or will not--work for minimum wage, according to Patti Fox, a “job developer” with San Diego State University’s Counseling Services and Placement Center.

During the school year, 25 to 40 new jobs are posted each day at SDSU’s job board, and Fox indicated that “persistent” students usually can land a better-paying job.

SDSU’s counselors are quick to advise employers that better-qualified candidates are demanding higher salaries. “I’ll definitely give them ranges on salaries they need to be offering,” Fox said. “And, judging from what I’ve seen, employers are having to pay more money” to attract entry-level employees.

Sea World, which last raised its minimum wage in July, 1988, envisions a minimum hourly wage of at least $5 during 1990, Masters said. “I’d guess that most employers will be paying $5 by then to get the people they need,” Masters said.

“We’re even recruiting against” Disneyland, Masters said. “Disney was down here at a recent job fair, and they’ve got the same problems that we have.”

Sea World will hire 3,000 part-timers during 1989 to augment its 600 permanent employees because it is increasingly expensive to attract and train new employees.

Similarly, part-time help is important at the zoo, where more than 250 part-timers will augment the 360 full-time employees. At the Wild Animal Park near Escondido, 100 seasonal employees will be added to a full-time staff of 250.

AMERICA’S SHRINKING TEEN LABOR FORCE

(estimated) 1979 1986 2000 Men (16-19): 5,111,000 4,102,000 4,501,000 Women (16-19): 4,527,000 3,824,000 4,379,000

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.