Young Workers at Work

Instructor Notes: Consuming Work Main Themes of Chapters 2-3: Demographic Characteristics of Working Youth

• Why Youth Work While Still in School? • Methods That Youth Use to Find Work • Methods Employers Use to Hire Youth

Who Are Youth Workers?

• Most Youth Work in Service/Retail Sector • Typical Service/Retail Sector Jobs:

• Considered “Bad” Jobs: Routine, Low wages, Part-Time Hours, Few/No Benefits, No autonomy, limited opportunity for advancement

• Assumption: Typical Workers in these jobs, i.e. youth that would want to work under such conditions must be desperately poor

• Truth: Labor Force Participation Rates • Highest Socioeconomic Group: Highest Youth Labor Force Participation (LFP)

Lowest Socioeconomic Group: Lowest Youth LFP Consuming Work Who Are Youth Workers? Socioeconomic Status

Research Tools employed:

• Ethnography: is the study of people in their own environment using methods such as participant observation and face-to-face interviewing.

• Premise: Young people themselves have been left out of the study of youth labor • Large Scale Surveys – Looking for patterns in the data sets

o National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY) o World Values Study (WVS)

Main subject of Ethnography – First Wave of Research • National coffee chain in upper to middle class suburbs • Limited to in school workers aged 18-21 (college students)

• Limitations of First Wave Ethnography? • Representation

• Second/Third Wave Research Included: • Youth workers at different jobs • More racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse group for comparison

Majority of Higher Socioeconomic Youth Live in the Suburbs

• Suburbs criticized – “Social Wastelands” • Offer few spaces for social interaction and limited opportunities to meet new people • Limited opportunities to socialize with friends without parental supervision

• Past: Malls and other shops had provided sheltered spaces for youth to hang out/socialize • But now – crack down on such gatherings

• Retail/Service Work: Become the New Malls • Provide space where young people can meet new people and socialize with their friends

away from adult supervision and public scrutiny. • Local residents don’t see idle teenagers causing potential trouble. But responsible youth

transitioning into adulthood. Why Are Higher Socioeconomic Youth Working In Service/Retail Jobs? --- Demand Side Theory

• Cultural Understanding: Retail/service workers are unskilled, low paid “automatons” working in standardized, routinized jobs.

• BUT - Besen–Cassino Research: Work is quite diverse • Many jobs are at boutique retailers that are high-end establishments or in specialized

services where employers are looking for personality traits and people skills. • Note, however, the retail/service jobs also encompass “fast food” jobs that are not

considered as desirable by youth workers who have a choice. • Young, attractive, middle-class students who have these characteristics become some of the

most desirable sought-after workers. • This, however, only explains the demand side of the association between retail/service work

and higher socioeconomic youth workers. Why Are Higher Socioeconomic Youth Working In Service/Retail Jobs? --- Supply Side Theory Traditional Thought: Work is used for consumption of products by higher socioeconomic youth

• Traditional Idea: Work and Leisure are in opposition. They are mutually exclusive. Leisure is whatever you do when you are not working.

• Assumption then: If these youth are working during free time from school (“their work”) it must be to acquire money to support their consumption (buying) patterns.

Young People’s Lives have been “Commodified” and “Branded”:

• What is consumed by youth has been imbued with social meaning. • Markets assign social meaning to different products and brands. • By consuming these products, young people form and market their identities. • Marketing is geared not to just show the function of products but to show the kind of

person who would use the product. The products that are purchased reflect “lifestyle choices” that those who purchase them want to be identified with.

• Youth search and display their identities through their consumption patterns. They also seek to gain access and membership into groups because of the products.

Besen-Cassino Theory: Rejects traditional supply side theories for higher socioeconomic youth. Her theory - work is leisure for these higher socioeconomic youth and a product to be consumed.

• Work is not just an activity that facilitates consumption but itself is consumed as a leisure activity

• Division between work and leisure is arbitrary. It actually obscures these youth worker’s real motivation for working.

• Studies the consumption of work and branded work experiences as markers of identity among youth.

• Takes “commodification and branding of youth identity” by consumption of products and applies it to why higher socioeconomic youth work.

• Work is no longer just a means to consume commodities. It is an object of consumption itself. • Jobs have been Branded: Used as identity markers reflecting a certain lifestyle for the

Youth that work them. • Work experience for these youth workers is not only a leisure activity (a social space to

see friends and socialize) but a branded experience to be consumed. Important To Distinguish the Motivations Of Higher Vs. Lower Socioeconomic Youth Workers

• Higher Socioeconomic workers have choice: • Consequently, they can refuse certain types of retail/service work that does not provide the

branding they wish to have associated with their identity. • Although Service/Retail jobs are in essence homogeneous, they have similar job duties,

working conditions, and pay, they are branded as different by young people. • E.g., Fast food work has an undesirable brand as opposed to other retail/service

work. • As is explained by employer choices and geography, economically disadvantaged youth who

need jobs regardless of the brand they might hold, are either shut out of the workforce entirely or work in the least desirable positions.

Branding Jobs: How Employers Fill Their Demand for Workers What separates what youth consider desirable places to work vs. the undesirable ones? Branding: The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. An effective brand strategy gives a major edge in increasingly competitive markets.

• It is the sub-total of all the “experiences” your customers have with your business. • Branding by a company is not only for consumers but they are also marketing to

potential employees. • Just as consumption of brands distinguishes individuals from others, working at the

certain job creates a similar association with a brand. • Besen-Cassino found that for many of the students that she interviewed – the particular

brand of the store was an essential factor to the student working there. For youth, working at a desirable store is an alternative way to consume the same brand and create a brand association.

• Besen-Cassino found that many youth believed that the part-time job a person had defined that person.

• Working was not simply a means to earn money, but a marker of identity. • Where they worked defines them as people. • Just by knowing were someone worked, youth made many assumptions about workers’

interest, social and political preferences, and other consumption habits. • So, for these higher socioeconomic youth, the decision about where to work is NOT

about the money but about projecting a certain image to others. • As explained, however, this is not necessarily true for lower socioeconomic youth, who

don’t have choice as to where they work and thus, they may utilize different search methods that focus not as much on the brand but on the compensation and benefits associated with the job.

Employers use the students’ desire to work at a favored brand when recruiting new employees.

• Unlike in traditional jobs, job experience, skills and education have little place in the hiring process.

• Rather many service sector employers base their hiring decisions on the images that potential employees project because working in the service sector involves selling not only your labor but also your personality and emotions during your shift.

• Many corporations are selling not simply a service but a certain “branded” service. • Employers can be trained in the actual conduct of the job, but it is much harder to train

someone to project the desired image. • Employers are not just marketing their products but the type of experiences, lifestyle,

and status that consumers and potential employees would like to capture. • An integral part of the “branded service” is the employee, who serves as the face of the

corporation in the service sector. Branding Jobs: How Employers Fill Their Demand for Workers – Aesthetic Labor Employers use the students’ desire to work at a favored brand when recruiting new employees.

• This leads to the development of “Aesthetic Labor.” • Aesthetic Labor involves the way employees are expected to embody the product in

industries such as service and hospitality. • The employer wants to hire employees based on their physical appearance and its

favorable appeal to customers’ senses. • The employer develops and commodifies this appeal through training, management,

and regulation to produce a specific style of service that is consistent with its brand. • The employees need to “look good” and “sound right” to project and maintain the

image of the corporation. Branding Jobs: How Employers Fill Their Demand for Workers – Marketing of the Jobs Employers use the students’ desire to work at a favored brand when recruiting new employees.

• The employer markets the jobs as a product to be consumed, as an enjoyable experience similar to their experience as customers. • In her research Besen-Cassino found that among employer ads that only a small number

mention pay, benefits, working conditions and other economic concerns. Rather the ads focused on the following:

1. The importance of being able to hang out and socialize with friends while they worked

2. The coolness and desirability of the brand. 3. The ads market the job by drawing similarities to the products sold in the store. If

you like consuming the goods we have for sale, you will like selling them. 4. Many ads refer to employee discounts while ignoring other benefits. 5. Being a consumer of the brand is the first step to working for the company.

Branding Jobs: How Employers Fill Their Demand for Workers – The Hiring Process In the hiring process, Besen-Cassino found that:

• Social skills and people skills were more important than the actual resume of the candidates. • Employers felt this way because future employees could learn the duties they would need on

the job, but social and personal skills were harder to learn or change. • Blink Decisions: Employers often used first impressions. They are looking for the “style” that

the corporation wishes to project. The immediate self-presentation by an applicant is the primary means used for hiring.

• In this instance human capital (skills, knowledge, experience) is no substitute for cultural capital.

• Great deal of subjectivity. Is this method of hiring open for discrimination or is it democratizing?

• By not basing decisions on objective job-related criteria – opening hiring based on discriminatory factors.

• Some scholars argue, however, that because human capital is more difficult to acquire as opposed to “aesthetic labor,” thus eliminating potential class distinctions.

• Unfortunately, the using first impressions and aesthetic labor involve a lifelong set of internalized social expectations that are NOT devoid of class and other inequalities but often are markers of affluence.