Nathan Levy’s Sunday began like any other adult. He woke up at 5 a.m., got ready for work, and headed out. He worked until around 12:30 p.m., and after he got off this job, he went straight to his second job, where he worked from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. On this specific day, there was a dilemma at his work, and he ended up needing to stay for an extra 45 minutes, meaning he got back to his house around 11 p.m. This seems like a long, but manageable day for a working adult in America. Only Nathan Levy is not a working adult in America. He is a senior at The Morgan school.
The highest percentage of high school students having part-time jobs in recorded data is 1999, with 35.5% of high school students having a part-time job. Adding on to that, in 2000, U.S. citizens between the ages of 16-24 with part-time jobs peaked, rising all the way to 59.8%.
Although, teen employment rates did not stay that high. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2023, around 51.7% of all U.S. citizens between the ages of 16-24 had part-time jobs. However, only 24.3% of U.S. citizens enrolled in a high school institution were working a part-time job.
High school employment means something different to everyone. For Levy, he feels it’s crucial students at least attempt to work in high school because of the life skills it teaches.
“I think working in high school is extremely important to developing crucial life skills. Skills that can’t be taught like time management, social skills, communication (especially for people outside of your age group), respectfulness, and the whole process of applying for, and maintaining a job,” Levy shared.
But why were the teen employment rates so high in 1999? One theory – sports.
According to the National Library of Medicine, 27.2% of girls participated in a high school sport in 1999, and 39.5% of boys participated in a high school sport in 1999.
Those numbers have skyrocketed. According to NFHS Network, during the 2024-25 sport season, 8,266,244 U.S. high school students participated in a sport offered by their high school. And according to Research.com, approximately 16.5 million students were enrolled in a private or public high school in the U.S., meaning around 50% of high school students participated in a sport during 2024 and 2025.
Participation in high school sports has been a growing trend over the past decades. The jump from students playing a sport in the 23-24 sport season to the 24-25 sport season was 203,942 students.
Levy is a student who falls into the margin of high school students who participate in a sports team and also have a part time job.
He has worked at Shop Rite since he was 15 years old. This past November and December, for the second year in a row, Levy worked on the Essex Steam Train as a sleepy server. This meant that some weekends, he was working all day. One specific Sunday, he worked almost 19 hours straight, and the night before that, he had worked until 10 p.m.
“It is definitely very stressful to manage multiple jobs along with school, my EMT class, baseball, and my social life, but you just have to recognize and enjoy the little things along the way that most people overlook,” Levy shared.
Levy works year round, while maintaining a 4.3 GPA. He is also a part of the Morgan baseball team during the spring. “The easiest way I maintain my GPA is just by thinking of the small things. Just take everything one test or one homework assignment at a time and just do your best,” Levy shared.
“The con of having a job in high school is the added stress and long days. In my mind, I take this as a pro for me because even though it is hard now, it helps teach those skills previously stated and is beneficial to your future. Having a job also teaches financial discipline. Being able to earn your own money and having to make financial decisions and weigh the pros and cons of certain choices is a huge part of maturing and preparing to be independent.”
Senior Brenna Moore works three jobs currently, the Essex Steam Train as a waitress, Donahues as a hostess/runner, and is a ski instructor at Magic Mountain in Londonderry, Vermont. She played for the Morgan girls soccer team her freshman, sophomore, and junior year, but decided to not play her senior year to give full commitment to her work.
“I work because if I am not, I feel like I have too much time on my hands, so I just thought, I might as well make money while filling my time,” Moore reflected.
“I enjoy working. It teaches me real life skills and responsibilities that school is unable to. I think once I’m an adult with a full time job, I will be able to handle the stress a lot better than others who do not work as much as I do,” Moore states.
Moore began working when she was 14 at Magic Mountain. “My family and I grew up going to the mountain, we have a house near there. My brother became a ski instructor there when he was 15,” Moore explained. “The next year, when I was 14, I shadowed other instructors until I turned 15, when I was legally able to instruct my own lessons. I have been working there ever since, every time we go up, which is every weekend from December to early April.”
The Essex Steam Train is an operation in Essex, CT, that runs year round. However, from the beginning of November until December 23rd, the company runs a special train, called the North Pole Express. Many students from The Morgan School work on the train during this time, and last year, Moore was one of those students.
She began as any other first year employee, working as an elf on the train. But after the season had ended, she was asked to stay and work as a waitress on the “dinner train”, which is a full year position, where the train runs as a restaurant. Transitioning from where working as an elf to working as a waitress on a moving train was difficult, but Moore made it work. If anything, it allowed her to grow as a person and an employee.
“Entering the restaurant business through the train was an efficient way to enter, in my opinion, because it made working in a normal restaurant easier. We serve food and drinks while the train is moving, so learning how to wait on people in a moving restaurant helped my skills grow for when I inevitably began working at a brick and mortar restaurant.
