Summer Job Blues

Debbie Lejeune hates to admit this. Even though it’s summer and she could sleep till noon, what she really wants is for her mom to have a reason to holler: “Debbie get up; you’re gonna be late.”

Late for work that is. Not school.

But as much as 16-year-olds like Debbie yearn for a paycheck, employers want workers with impressive resumes and references, and their own vehicle. Those can be big hurdles for a high school student seeking his or her first job.

“It would be a lot easier to find work if I had experience. At least that’s what everyone keeps telling me,” says Debbie, who will be junior at Thousand Oaks High School, holding a dozen mostly blank job applications. “But if I’ve never had a job, then how am I supposed to get experience?”

That’s a conundrum that has bedeviled first-time job seekers for years and is no easier with lots of overqualified adults vying for minimum-wage jobs that were once largely filled by teens.

In a nation where a paycheck serves as a passport to adulthood, the chance to buy what one wants--miniskirt, concert ticket, tattoo--is a great rush of freedom.

“The need is greater this year than I’ve ever seen it before,” says Joyce Waldron, executive director of Ventura County Youth Employment Service for the past 29 years. “Not only for their own personal needs, but many of these youths help out their families.”

About 40 new young job seekers call or drop by Waldron’s office each day, she says.

In part, this is due to a cut in federal money for summer jobs for at-risk or low-income youths. Earlier this month, the Summer Youth Employment and Training Program budget was cut by one-third. That means only 650 youths will receive subsidized jobs clearing trails in state parks or answering phones in government offices--down from the 953 employed last year.

The reduced federal aid prompted Ventura County supervisors and the Oxnard Employment Development Department (EDD) to mail more than 12,000 letters this month to county employers asking them to create summer jobs for youths.

Since the letters were mailed, 47 employers from Ojai, Oxnard, Moorpark, Thousand Oaks and Ventura have called the unemployment office to alert them to 90 openings for secretaries, cashiers, food servers, telemarketers and clerks, said Ignacio Abeyta, who oversees youth employment programs at the Oxnard EDD office.

Abeyta says he receives 40 to 50 inquiries a day from 16- to 22-year-olds seeking work. “We’re really impressed with the community’s response,” says Abeyta, who speculates that some employers created the jobs out of a sense of civic duty. “But there are still more young people contacting us for jobs than we have openings.”

He advises young job seekers to not only look at want ads, but to use family connections, church groups and neighbors and to consider what skills or traits they have that will make them desirable to an employer.

“A bubbly personality is good,” Abeyta tells them, “but earrings on noses and tongues are not.”

For those who do find a job, a bit of soul-searching comes with the territory.

How honest should you be on the job application? Do you take the better-paying job or the one you like? And, for a growing number of Ventura County youth, how much of your paycheck do you give to parents short on rent or $100 behind on a car payment?

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Josue Cruz Jr., 17, works as a carpenter’s assistant not only to save for his class ring and senior trip, but also to help his mother put food on the table.

Since his father’s death last year, the incoming Fillmore High senior has worked for Hector Tarango, a carpenter who is a friend’s father. Tarango has taught him how to lay floor tile, grout, repair faucets and--most important--give estimates.

Before that, Josue’s work experience was limited to a job at a burger joint at Magic Mountain and his carpentry skills to the tool box and porch swing he made in shop class.

“I feel more confident in myself now,” says Josue, who slips his mother a $20 bill twice a week for groceries and every so often takes his younger brother and sister out for pizza or burgers.

Josue plans to attend a technical college when he graduates. Sure, he’d rather spend his summer at the beach or dancing at a rave party, but he takes pride in his job and feels lucky to have it.

“My friends, who are working at McDonald’s and stuff, tell me, ‘Hey, hook me up with Hector, man. Tell him I’m a good worker,” Josue says.

And since he needs the money, he would himself work more than the 20 hours a week, if his boss could afford it.

A lot of teens in Ventura County come from families in which their extra income is welcome, says Jamshid Damooei, an economics professor at Cal Lutheran University.

It is that much harder for teenagers to find summer jobs, says Damooei, when there are skilled adults willing to do unskilled work.

“When you have lots of people competing for minimum-wage jobs the employers become a bit fussy,” says Damooei, who has studied Ventura County’s economy for two decades. The county’s unemployment rates, which dipped below 6% this month, don’t tell the whole story, Damooei says.

More revealing, says Damooei, is that the number of families in Ventura County with teens in the work force is high.

“Why?” asks Damooei. “It’s an expensive county to live in and not all the people in this county are making big money.”

However, many high school students say their paychecks tend to go more for clothes or music or car repairs than toward helping to pay Mom or Dad’s mortgage.

A soon-to-be senior at Adolfo Camarillo High School, Sara Franklin, applied for a job at Esprit in Camarillo earlier this year, as much for the employee discount as for the actual paycheck.

As a sales clerk there, Sara uses her earnings to purchase blouses, tote bags and dresses like the ones she places on the store’s shelves.

“I wanted to be able to buy a dress if I wanted a dress and not say, ‘Mom, can I have $40 to buy a dress,’ ” says Sara, who worked part time during the school year as a restaurant cashier.

She found her job at Esprit by walking in and asking for an application. “I think it helped that they saw that I shopped here a lot and really liked the clothes,” Sara says.

It did, her manager agreed.

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Since most of her salary goes for clothes and to help pay for insurance and gas on the 1991 Ford Escort her parents gave her as a 16th birthday gift, the job’s lack of health benefits and less than full-time hours don’t concern her.

“I’m not looking forward to grown-up responsibilities . . . the mortgage, the water bill, the car payment,” she says.

But the responsibility of a job has taught her one big lesson, she adds.

“Now I know what my mom means when she comes home from work and says, ‘My feet hurt,’ or ‘I’m tired.’ ”

Even when jobs don’t teach young people a skill they’re likely to use later in life, work still teaches important lessons. Jobs teach youths discipline, how to interact with others and how to relate to society in a productive way, Damooei agrees.

But Debbie Lejeune isn’t sure that all the lessons are positive.

Recently, she and a school friend were asked to complete a 50-question personality profile along with their applications for jobs at a new Linens ‘n Things store at Janss Marketplace.

Debbie said the test included questions about drug use, theft and values. She wasn’t sure whether to check “yes” or “no” when asked if she would turn in either a family member or another employee if they were stealing from their job.

Debbie answered “no.” Her friend answered “yes,” and Debbie is convinced that’s why her friend was hired.

Afterward, Debbie’s mother, Jerri Lejeune, an elementary school teacher, gave her daughter some tried-and-true job advice: “Next time, tell them what they want to hear.”