{"id":5371,"date":"2012-03-04T18:23:39","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T01:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=5371"},"modified":"2012-03-04T18:24:23","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T01:24:23","slug":"for-jobless-teen-search-for-work-is-struggle-to-help-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/03\/04\/for-jobless-teen-search-for-work-is-struggle-to-help-family\/","title":{"rendered":"For Jobless Teen, Search For Work Is Struggle To Help Family"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

Stephen Berry says he's been looking for work nearly every day for months now, with no luck.<\/p><\/div>\n

StateImpact<\/em>‘s story on teen unemployment<\/a> will air tomorrow morning on KBSX.\u00a0 Ahead of that story, we’re doing short profiles<\/a> of a couple of the teenagers who agreed to be interviewed.\u00a0 One of them is Stephen Berry, 18, a senior at Frank Church High School.<\/p>\n

For Berry, wanting to work isn’t about wanting to earn spending money, or saving up for later on.\u00a0 It’s about wanting to help his family.\u00a0 “At my house, we have four people going off of one income,” he says.\u00a0 “We barely make it by.”\u00a0 Berry’s step-dad works at a furniture store, and his mother has an illness that keeps her from getting a job.\u00a0 Berry’s younger sister just turned 16, and is trying to find work.<\/p>\n

Berry, himself, has been looking for months now.\u00a0 He says he’s going about it in all the ways he can think of.\u00a0 “I have my name and resume entered into three or four different job application sites,” he says.\u00a0 “When I\u2019m on the bus from school, I\u2019ll look for signs that say ‘now hiring.’\u00a0 Or I\u2019ll walk in and ask if they\u2019re hiring.”<\/p>\n

Usually, they’re not.\u00a0 Berry says he knows part of the problem is that the odds are against him.\u00a0 With so many people out of work, it’s hard for an 18-year-old to rise to the top of the list.\u00a0 “They could hire someone who\u2019s, like, 39 and used to work at Micron and needs to support a family of his own,” Berry says.<\/p>\n

He estimates he has applied for work at 20 or 25 different businesses, and in some cases he’s applied multiple times.\u00a0 “I\u2019m looking pretty much every day,” he says.\u00a0 “Even if I\u2019m sitting at home and both cars are gone, I\u2019ll walk to any nearby places. And by nearby I mean three or four miles.”\u00a0 Then he’ll come home, he says, and look for jobs online.<\/p>\n

Berry can count on bringing money in a few months from now.\u00a0 He has enlisted in the Marines, he says, and he’ll begin boot camp in late July.\u00a0 He says he’ll give his family access to his bank account, once he starts getting paid.\u00a0 But that’s months away.\u00a0 Too long, he says.\u00a0 He has to keep trying to find work now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

StateImpact‘s story on teen unemployment will air tomorrow morning on KBSX.\u00a0 Ahead of that story, we’re doing short profiles of a couple of the teenagers who agreed to be interviewed.\u00a0 One of them is Stephen Berry, 18, a senior at Frank Church High School. For Berry, wanting to work isn’t about wanting to earn spending […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":5375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[46,74,133],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5371"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}