
Poor Kids Need Summer Jobs. Rich Kids Get Them - Overtonwindow
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/poor-kids-need-summer-jobs-rich-kids-get-them/
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biocomputation
From a white, middle class background. I am one of six children, and while my
parents made a decent living, six children meant that money was always tight.
Still, my Mom taught us the importance of good manners and being able to speak
properly. She did this because she thought it was the right thing to do, and
because she knew we didn't have the same financial advantages as other people.

I learned an important lesson about this in my very early twenties when I
applied for a summer internship at a local firm. There were only two
interviews: one with engineering and one with the owner. The owner gave me the
internship on the spot not because of my qualifications, but because he liked
the way I dressed and spoke. His words to me were something along the lines of
"I feel comfortable putting you in front of our clients."

One of the reasons poverty is so disabling is because it changes the way a lot
of people ( but not all people ) carry themselves. People from wealthier
backgrounds often _present_ better and get first crack at opportunities as a
result. Note that when I say "present", I am talking about mostly superficial
qualities, not level of education, skill, or other deeper qualities.

Anyone can learn to present themselves the right way, with respect to
speaking, dressing, and credentials - although it's extra work and extra cost
for those who have already fought very hard for their chance to climb the
ladder.

~~~
junipergreen
"And they may face discrimination based on race, class or other factors."

In urban areas, where access to transportation and availability of jobs is
better, this is really the crux of the issue. Employers (often unfairly) view
middle class kids as more reliable. So even if they think working class kids
will work harder (another common view in my experience), they see the middle
class teenagers as less of a risk.

~~~
dogma1138
Isn't middle class also a working class? I was brought up as middle class, not
especially wealthy would even classify it towards the lower end, but highly
educated as both parents were academics.

I worked every summer since I was 13, and 16ish to 18 also during the school
year now and then (17/18 was fairly lucky early it was really early 2000's and
I mastered PHP rather well so made actually decent money building websites
when web2.0, CMS and dynamic content were still meaningful buzzwords).

~~~
junipergreen
In the academic, Marxist sense, yes. But I was using the term "working class"
rather as a synonym for minimum wage, blue collar workers, or in this case
teenagers whose parents have those jobs. The point really is that middle class
kids (like you were) can get jobs (like you did), whereas poor kids often
can't.

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kapitza
No mention of the J1 visa, which employs hundreds of thousands of immigrant
students in US summer jobs:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/americas-
sweatshop...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/americas-sweatshop-
diplomacy.html)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Yup, total f###ing scam.

The local employers in the tourist area I grew up in load up on Irish and
eastern European college students every summer. They give them barely enough
hours to make ends meet if they live two and three to a room, ride a bike
~10mi or more to work and pick up another part time job on the side. Standard
practice was/is to hire too many people so that everybody would be fighting
for hours and firing people at the drop of a hat wasn't inconvenient.

The main benefit is getting a bunch of employees who are totally clueless
about their workplace rights in the US and is dependent on remaining employed
by the company that sponsored their visa in order to keep their visa. The
supermarkets and hotels were businesses who would usually sponsor J1s so they
were the ones who treated them like crap. The actual tourism parts of the
tourism industry only hires the foreign workers secondarily (since all the
foreign workers had at least two jobs) and treated them like anyone else.

This kind of behavior is particularly scummy since it would cost very little,
if any) additional money to pick up the phone and call a temp agency since
managing a primarily foreign workforce is inefficient. It's not about money,
it's about having employees you can treat like sh#t.

(Source: worked summer jobs with J1 students as coworkers)

