Summer Job Ideas for Teens: A Parent's Guide

Summer job ideas for teens are easy to find online. What is harder to find, and what actually matters first, is which of those jobs your teen is legally allowed to do at thirteen, at fifteen, at sixteen. The rules change at each age, the hours are capped for the youngest workers, and the paperwork depends on the state you live in. Get that part right and the rest is a fun problem: matching a kid to work they will not quit in week two.

This guide sorts the best summer jobs by age, walks through the federal rules most listicles skip, and shows what each kind of work tends to pay. There is a matcher below to narrow the list to your teen, three lessons that build the earning side, and a simple way to turn the first paycheck into something more than a weekend of spending.

The best summer job ideas for teens, by age

The best summer job for a teen is the one they are old enough to hold, can actually get to, and will not abandon after the first hard shift. Sorted by what opens up at each age, the options fall into four groups.

1. Casual work at 13. Babysitting, dog walking and pet sitting, lawn and yard work, car washing, and tutoring younger kids. No work permit, no minimum-age problem, and a real client list by August.
2. First formal jobs at 14 and 15. Grocery bagging, retail, ice cream shops and fast-casual restaurants, and camp counselor-in-training roles. Summer hours are capped by federal law.
3. More options at 16. Barista work, food service, paid internships, and online freelance gigs. The federal hour limits drop, so a teen can finally work a real schedule.
4. The certification jobs. Lifeguarding and swim instruction pay noticeably more, and they are within reach at fifteen or sixteen once the credential is done.

Two things decide which group is the right starting point: your teen's age and how much time they actually want to give up. A rising ninth grader who wants a few hours a week is in a different conversation than a sixteen-year-old saving for a car. Most families do best starting one tier below what feels ambitious. A first job that ends well, even a small one, makes the next one easier. A first job that ends in a quit by July teaches the wrong lesson about work, and it is harder to undo than it looks.

What's actually legal at each age (the part most lists skip)

This is the part of the search that sends parents in circles, and for good reason. The rules really do change at three different ages, and the state layer sits on top of the federal one. Here is the version that fits on one page.

The federal floor for most non-agricultural jobs is 14. That comes from the Fair Labor Standards Act, summarized in the Department of Labor's child-labor fact sheet. Below 14, formal employment is mostly off the table, with specific carve-outs the law names directly: babysitting, casual yard work, delivering newspapers, and performing. Those are the gigs a 13-year-old lives in, and they are legitimate work, not consolation prizes.

At 14 and 15, the first formal jobs open up, but with hour limits. When school is out, the DOL's youth age-requirement rules cap work at 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week, between 7am and 9pm in summer. The evening cutoff drops to 7pm once school is back, and the weekly cap drops to 18 hours. The work also has to be non-hazardous, which rules out most machinery, ladders, and the hot side of a commercial kitchen.

At 16 and 17, the federal hour cap goes away. A sixteen-year-old can work a full summer schedule. What stays in place are the hazardous-occupation rules: no roofing, no power-driven meat slicers, no operating most heavy equipment until 18.

Then there is the part almost every listicle leaves out: work permits. There is no federal permit requirement, but many states require one anyway, often called working papers or an age certificate, usually for workers under 16 and sometimes under 18. A few states instead ask the employer to keep proof of age on file. Because it varies, the only reliable move is to check your own state's labor department, which the DOL indexes on its state age-certificate page. Do it the same week as the offer, not after, so a missing form does not stall the start date.

Summer jobs for 13-year-olds (informal work, no permit)

If your teen is thirteen, the question is not really which employer will hire them. It is which of the casual gigs fits their temperament, and whether you are nearby enough to help them start. These jobs run on reputation and word of mouth, which is exactly the skill set a first job is supposed to build.

Babysitting is the classic for a reason. It pays well for the age, often $15 to $20 an hour, and the trust it requires turns into repeat customers fast. A short babysitting-safety or first-aid class makes a thirteen-year-old far more bookable, and it gives you some peace of mind too.

Dog walking and pet sitting suit a kid who would rather be outside than in someone's living room. The pay is steady, $12 to $18 an hour is common, and the schedule bends around summer plans.

Lawn and yard work pays per job rather than per hour, usually $15 to $25 for a typical yard, and the before-and-after is visible enough that good work sells the next job for them.

Car washing, a baking or maker stall, and reselling round out the list. Each one is a small business in miniature: set a price, cover the cost of supplies, keep what is left. That is the same loop a lemonade stand teaches a six-year-old, scaled up to a teenager who can actually do the math behind it.

The through-line is that thirteen is the age to practice earning before the stakes get real. A teen who has run a few yard jobs walks into a fourteen-year-old's first formal interview already knowing how to show up on time and finish the work. If chores at home are where the earning habit starts, our chore ideas by age guide covers how to structure paid work before there is an outside employer in the picture.

First formal jobs at 14 and 15

The jump to a real job with a name tag and a schedule is a big one, and it is the moment a lot of summer jobs for teens with no experience actually begin. Fourteen and fifteen are when an employer will put a teen on the payroll, as long as the work is non-hazardous and the hours stay inside the summer limits from the section above.

The reliable first jobs at this age are grocery bagging and stocking, retail sales, ice cream shops and fast-casual restaurants, movie or ballpark concessions, and library or rec-center aide roles. They share the things that make a good first job: a manager who expects to train someone with no experience, shifts that are social and fast enough to stay interesting, and tasks a fourteen-year-old is legally cleared to do.

Camp counselor-in-training deserves its own mention. The pay is often modest, sometimes a weekly stipend plus meals rather than an hourly wage, but the role is a leadership apprenticeship. A CIT who does well frequently gets the paid counselor job the following summer, which is a better second-year wage than most retail floors.

Two practical reminders for this band. First, the hours: when school is out, the federal cap is 8 a day and 40 a week, ending by 9pm. A summer job should not quietly turn into a 45-hour week, and a good manager will know the rule. Second, the permit: if your state requires working papers, the employer usually cannot legally schedule the first shift until the form is signed, so start that paperwork early.

Jobs that open up at 16 (and the ones worth a certification)

Sixteen is when the menu widens. The federal hour limits are gone, the list of allowed tasks gets longer, and a teen can hold a job that looks a lot like an adult's part-time work. This is also where most searches for summer jobs for 16 year olds land, because the options finally match the ambition.

Barista work, food service, and retail all open further at sixteen, including roles that use equipment a younger teen could not touch. Paid internships become realistic, and they are worth more than their hourly rate because of what they put on a first resume. Test-prep tutoring is the quiet high-earner: a teen with a strong SAT or ACT score can charge well above minimum wage to coach a younger student.

For the work-from-home crowd, online freelance gigs are the most flexible option, and they are what most parents mean when they search for online summer jobs for teens. Writing, design, simple editing, and social-media help can all be done around a summer schedule with no commute. The pay is wide, anywhere from $10 to $50 an hour depending on skill, so treat the high end as a goal, not a starting point.

Then there are the certification jobs. Lifeguarding and swim instruction pay noticeably more than an entry retail shift, $17 to $22 an hour is common for lifeguards, and a teen can usually certify at fifteen and work at sixteen. The credential takes a weekend course and a test, and it is the rare line on a teen resume that signals real responsibility to a future employer.

Not sure which of these fits your teen? The matcher below takes four quick answers and ranks the jobs that actually fit their age, their summer, and whether they have a way to get there.

How to help your teen land the job (without doing it for them)

This is the question behind the question, the one that comes up once the list is settled: how much help is too much? The honest line is that your job is to scaffold, not to apply. A teen who sends their own messages and walks in to ask in person learns something a parent-submitted application skips entirely.

A few moves help without taking over. Start with the people you already know. The first job for most teens comes through a neighbor, a coach, a friend's parent, or the shop they already visit, not a job board. Have your teen make a short list of those contacts and reach out themselves. Write the resume together, once. Even with no formal experience, a babysitting record, a yard-work client list, and a strong school subject are real material. Help them shape those into one clean page, then let them own it. Run one practice interview at the kitchen table. Two questions are plenty: why do you want this job, and tell me about a time something went wrong and what you did about it. The point is the reps, not a script to memorize.

Then step back. Let them send the message with the small typo you noticed, follow up when nothing comes back, and feel the sting of the first no. Those are the parts that make the first paycheck mean something. If you want the in-app version of all of this, the three lessons below cover finding safe work, reading a first paystub, and turning a side idea into actual income.

Turn the first paycheck into a saving habit

Here is the part that outlasts the job itself. A summer job is the first time the money is large and recurring, and the first time a teen feels the gap between what they earned and what is left by Friday. That gap is the whole lesson, and it is far easier to teach with a structure already in place than with a lecture after the money is gone.

The move that works is the same one that works at every younger age, scaled up: split the paycheck the moment it lands. A save, spend, and give split, decided once, means the saving happens before the spending instead of with whatever is left over. In Sprout Saver, every payday can route automatically into those three jars, and the Save jar can go into the Vault, which locks it for a set number of days so a slow-building total does not get raided for a late-night impulse. A named Goal, a car fund or a concert or a first laptop, gives the saving a reason a teen actually cares about.

The three lessons below build the earning side directly. Pair them with the first real paycheck.

If you want the broader frame, our teaching kids about money by age guide covers what each stage is ready for, and the back-to-school money skills post picks up the same monthly-plan habit once the summer earnings turn into a school-year budget.

How much can a teen actually earn over a summer?

Parents ask this one a lot, usually because a teen has already named the thing they want to buy and now there is a number to work backward from. The honest answer is that it depends on the job, the hours, and the state, and that any single "average teen summer earnings" figure floating around online deserves a skeptical look unless it links to a primary source.

Start with the floor. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, but most states set a higher one, and a good number of teen jobs pay above minimum because summer demand is real. From there, the job decides the rest. Babysitting and lawn work often land between $15 and $25, lifeguarding around $17 to $22 an hour, and test-prep tutoring higher than both for the right tutor.

Hours matter as much as the rate. Work it through with your own numbers and the goal stops feeling abstract. A sixteen-year-old working 30 hours a week at $15 an hour earns about $450 a week before taxes, or roughly $4,000 across a nine-week summer. Split half of that to savings and it is around $2,000 toward a goal, from one summer. A fourteen-year-old capped at the 40-hour summer limit and a sixteen-year-old on a full schedule can hold the same job title and still finish the summer in very different places, which is worth saying out loud before anyone sets the goal.

A few situations break the plan, and each has a calm response. No callbacks is the most common: applications go out and nothing comes back. Treat it as a numbers game, widen the search to the informal gigs that never post a listing, and have your teen ask in person. Overcommitting is the opposite problem: a teen says yes to every shift and burns out by July, so protect some of the summer on purpose. And fake listings are worth a direct conversation, because the scams that target teen job seekers are specific and predictable. A listing that asks for money up front, or for bank details before an interview, is not a job. The first-job-safety lesson above walks through exactly what to watch for.

Common parent questions