--- title: That Lousy Summer Job Can Help Kids Get Ahead description: A UBC study shows that students with summer and school-year jobs earn more later in life. canonical: https://time.com/2965998/summer-jobs-resume-teenager/ author: Hannah Goldberg article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-09T15:14:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:55:36.760Z og:title: That Lousy Summer Job Can Help Kids Get Ahead og:description: New study shows that summer jobs lead to higher pay and better careers. og:url: https://time.com/2965998/summer-jobs-resume-teenager/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10381302a310b288/69869ae0e53abacf014d37bf/teenage-hamburger-macdonalds.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: An employee prepares hamburgers at a MacDonalds restaurant. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: That Lousy Summer Job Can Help Kids Get Ahead twitter:description: New study shows that summer jobs lead to higher pay and better careers. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10381302a310b288/69869ae0e53abacf014d37bf/teenage-hamburger-macdonalds.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # That Lousy Summer Job Can Help Kids Get Ahead by [Hannah Goldberg](https://time.com/author/hannah-goldberg/) ## Hannah Goldberg Jul 9, 2014 3:14 PM UTC  An employee prepares hamburgers at a MacDonalds restaurant. An employee prepares hamburgers at a MacDonalds restaurant.AFP/Getty Images by [Hannah Goldberg](https://time.com/author/hannah-goldberg/) ## Hannah Goldberg Jul 9, 2014 3:14 PM UTC Flipping burgers at a fast-food joint might offer teenagers more than just some extra cash. A new [study](http://news.ubc.ca/2014/07/07/summer-mcjobs-are-good-for-kids-says-sauder-study/) reveals that teenagers who work after-school or summer jobs reap career benefits down the road by establishing practical skills in the real world. The study, which was conducted by the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, used data from the Statistics Canada Youth in Transition Survey. Researchers followed 246,661 15-year-old Canadians for a 10-year period, until they turned 25\. Students who worked up to 33 hours per school week or 43 hours in the summer had more success finding jobs and earning higher wages. Marc-David L. Seidel, who co-authored the study , explained that working adolescents benefit from the early introduction to the workplace, boasting higher earnings and refining their networking skills. Yet, school-year and summer jobs can be controversial—facing off against protective parents and the coveted internship. “Adolescent labour has been stigmatized as exploitative with many parents opting to put their kids in summer camp rather than summer jobs,” said Professor Seidel. Other parents feel that their children are more suited to summer camps or educational enrichment programs. Internships are not an option for everyone, as interns are often unpaid. “Lucrative and influential professions — politics, media and entertainment, to name a few — now virtually require a period of unpaid work,” said author Ross Perlin, of _Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave_ Perlin in an article for the[ New York _Times_](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/02/04/do-unpaid-internships-exploit-college-students/todays-internships-are-a-racket-not-an-opportunity), “effectively barring young people from less privileged backgrounds.” Now, choosing to get a summer job over the unpaid internship is not a sacrifice, but perhaps a better plan for the future. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2965998/summer-jobs-resume-teenager/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2965998/summer-jobs-resume-teenager/"},"headline":"That Lousy Summer Job Can Help Kids Get Ahead","datePublished":"2014-07-09T15:14:50.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:55:36.760Z","description":"Students who worked up to 33 hours per school week or 43 hours in the summer benefitted in their future careers","url":"https://time.com/2965998/summer-jobs-resume-teenager/","keywords":["Living","study","career","internships"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10381302a310b288/69869ae0e53abacf014d37bf/teenage-hamburger-macdonalds.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Hannah Goldberg","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/hannah-goldberg/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10381302a310b288/69869ae0e53abacf014d37bf/teenage-hamburger-macdonalds.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"An employee prepares hamburgers at a MacDonalds restaurant.","caption":"An employee prepares hamburgers at a MacDonalds restaurant.","creditText":"AFP/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2965998/summer-jobs-resume-teenager/","name":"That Lousy Summer Job Can Help Kids Get Ahead"}}]}] ```