Press Herald interviews Cryer for report on building teen workforce
The Portland Press Herald spoke with Marc Cryer, director of the Bureau of Labor Education at the University of Maine, for the article, “As businesses face a labor crunch, state pushes to build teen workforce.” With the lowest state unemployment rate in 60 years and many industries struggling to find workers, the Department of Labor plans to tap into thousands of potential teen job-seekers with a public campaign to build the state’s underage workforce, the article states. However, hiring teens risks taking jobs away from adults who need them, according to Cryer. “There simply aren’t that many good full-time jobs in rural Maine, and it would be very important to look at the effects of increasing employment for minors on safety and the working hours of adults,” Cryer said. Training for future jobs and teaching work ethic are laudable goals, but promoting teen employment is contrary to policies in most advanced countries that prioritize education over paid work, he added. “Hour per hour, the value of education in dollars over the lifetime of the average American is much higher than the value gained by extra years of work,” prior to becoming a legal adult, Cryer said. “The best policy would clearly be to emphasize education over work.”