Summer employment taught punctuality, teamwork, customer service, responsibility, financial literacy and independence while serving as one of America’s most effective informal workforce development systems. The economics behind the disappearance of summer jobsThe decline in teenage employment reflects simultaneous changes in both labor supply and labor demand. Investing in America’s future workforceThe disappearance of teenage summer jobs represents one of the most significant yet underappreciated structural changes in the American labor market. Their decline reflects not a temporary recession but the combined effects of educational incentives, technological innovation, demographic change and evolving labor market institutions. Economic policy should therefore move beyond viewing teenage employment solely through the lens of short-term labor market statistics.