The Best Part-Time Jobs for High School Students: A Comprehensive Guide
Navigating the world of part-time jobs as a high school student can be a valuable experience, offering financial independence, skill development, and a glimpse into the professional world. Many high schoolers seek employment to fund personal expenses, save for future goals, or gain practical experience. This guide explores a variety of part-time and summer jobs suitable for high school students, encompassing both traditional roles and opportunities arising from the digital age. These entry-level positions generally require little to no prior experience, making them accessible to young individuals eager to enter the workforce.
Traditional Roles with Enduring Appeal
Babysitting: A Timeless Classic
Babysitting is one of the oldest and most reliable jobs in the world. Often arranged informally through personal connections, babysitting gigs may not involve extensive application processes. Wages for babysitting and nannying vary based on experience and responsibilities. While high schoolers may earn less than caregivers with advanced certifications or degrees, babysitting remains a readily available option. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the average hourly wage for childcare workers to be around $13.
Grocery Store Front-End Work: Cashiers and Baggers
Despite the increasing automation in the retail sector, grocery store cashiers and baggers are still in demand. These front-end positions are often open to applicants under 18, subject to local labor laws. Grocery store baggers typically earn around the local minimum wage, while cashiers may earn slightly more. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, retail cashiers earn a bit more than $13 per hour, but that’s an average.
Landscaping and Lawn Care: Flexible Outdoor Work
Landscaping and lawn care offer flexible and decent-paying opportunities for high school students. These roles often involve mowing lawns, raking leaves, planting flowers, trimming shrubs, and shoveling snow, depending on the season and location. The work arrangement is often informal and can be scaled by stringing together multiple gigs.
Lifeguarding: A Responsible Summer Job
Working as a lifeguard, often at community pools or water parks, is a popular summer job for high school students. While the pay may not be high, often around minimum wage, it offers a responsible role with the potential for a relaxed work environment. However, lifeguard positions can be competitive.
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Retail Store Clerk: Developing Customer Service Skills
Retail store clerks are losing ground as automation and e-commerce gain steam but they’ll likely remain part of the in-person shopping experience for the foreseeable future. This is a good way to develop customer service skills.
Restaurant Work: Serving, Bussing, and Kitchen Roles
Serving is a super-popular first job for high school students. Although local regulations often prohibit minor employees from bar service, they’re usually free to wait and bus tables - and earn tips enough to significantly boost their admittedly low base pay. The BLS includes servers and buspeople in its massive food and beverage service workers category, for which the median hourly wage is about $12.50. If you prefer to operate behind the scenes, working in a restaurant kitchen might be more your speed. Although state and federal law restricts minor employees from certain hazardous kitchen functions, such as operating deli slicers, less dangerous work - prepping ingredients, washing dishes - is fair game.
Camp Counselor: A Rewarding Experience with Kids
The phrases “summer job” and “camp counselor” are practically synonymous. Opportunities abound at summer day camps and childcare programs for aspiring camp counselors who’d prefer not to spend an entire summer away from home. If you like working with younger kids and want to work in an environment where entry-level workers have real responsibilities, being a camp counselor is close to an ideal gig. The biggest drawback is low pay. PayScale reports a median hourly wage just over $8.50 for summer camp counselors.
Opportunities in the Digital Age
Starting an Online Business: Entrepreneurial Endeavors
Starting an online business as a high school student is an excellent way to get a head start on life. Just ask David Karp, founder of a pioneering social blog platform site called Tumblr. Karp started Tumblr from his bedroom at the tender age of 15. In 2013, he sold the company to Yahoo for a cool $1.1 billion. The best thing about starting an online business - or working an online job in general - is that the startup costs are often minimal. Hosting plans from low-cost providers like Bluehost start at just a few dollars per month.
App-Based Food Delivery: Leveraging the Gig Economy
People need to eat. App-based food delivery services like DoorDash (for restaurants) and Instacart (for groceries) gained new visibility and hordes of new users during the coronavirus pandemic and look likely to stick around - one of the many long-term changes wrought by the ordeal. Good thing delivery apps aren’t the only game in town for aspiring delivery drivers. Base pay for delivery drivers isn’t great. The BLS pegs the average wage for food and beverage service workers - a much broader category that includes restaurant-based food delivery employees - at about $12.50 per hour, although entry-level workers should expect a lower wage. The upside is that delivery drivers earn tips, which can far outstrip wages during busy periods.
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Web Development and Design: Coding Your Way to Success
“Learn to code,” they say. If you’re more comfortable in front of a double-monitor workstation than a cash register or moving truck, the answer is an unqualified “yes.” Web development and design are among the best-paying office-based, freelancer-friendly occupations that require no formal credentials, experience, or education. But there’s plenty of time for that. And if you’re entirely new to coding? No sweat.
Other Avenues for Earning
Moving Company Assistant: Physically Demanding Work
Helping people move is another physically demanding job that’s ideal for enterprising young folks with little skilled experience. Moving involves heavy lifting, commercial trucks, and other occupational hazards, so many moving companies require applicants to be at least 18 years old. But this requirement isn’t universal. Movers earn decent pay. According to Payscale, the median hourly wage for this occupation is about $15.50, although entry-level workers should expect to earn more like $11 to $14 per hour.
Pet Care Services: A Flexible Option for Animal Lovers
Like landscaping and babysitting, pet care services - dog walking, pet sitting, and related activities - is a flexible, scalable, often informal gig that’s great for entrepreneurial high schoolers. Because you almost certainly have pet parents in your extended social network, tapping that network might be all that’s needed to land a steady stream of part-time pet care work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the median wage for animal care and service workers at about $14 per hour. Jobs that involve less work or responsibility, such as feeding a neighbor’s cat once per day while they’re away on vacation, might pay a bit less.
Tutoring: Sharing Knowledge and Skills
Tutors’ compensation correlates closely with their credentials. In other words, really well-paid tutors - the kind who earn $50 or more per hour through tutor-student matching platforms like Tutor.com - generally have college degrees. That shouldn’t stop enterprising, whip-smart high schoolers from seeking out tutoring jobs through their social networks or local advertising. Several of my high school friends made good money as tutors, and all found work through classified ads and client referrals rather than agencies or digital platforms. Depending on the subject matter and your qualifications - such as a high standardized test score in your chosen subject - you can expect to earn anywhere from $15 to $25 showing younger students the ropes.
Warehouse Work: Behind-the-Scenes Logistics
Yes, the accelerating shift to e-commerce is bad news for brick-and-mortar retailers and their employees. Many logistics jobs are off-limits to high schoolers, including delivery roles that involve driving commercial trucks and any warehouse positions with Amazon, which doesn’t hire under-18s. But many non-Amazon warehouses do hire high schoolers, contingent upon local labor laws that restrict minor employees from working late at night or early in the morning, when warehouses tend to be in full swing.
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Office Clerk: Gaining Administrative Experience
The summer I spent as an office clerk wasn’t my most exciting school break - not by a long shot. I made decent money too: about 50% more than the minimum wage at the time, which felt like a lot for a high schooler. According to the BLS, I was actually underpaid; the average wage for office clerks ($18 per hour) is more than twice the federal minimum wage. Most low-level office jobs require high school diplomas, but not all. I was able to land one as a high schooler, and I suspect the path is easier for students seeking employment with their parents’ or parents’ friends’ employers. If you’re not fortunate enough to have an “in” like that, all is not lost.
Barista: Brewing Skills and Customer Service
Working as a coffee shop barista is a fairly low-stakes way to acquire the sorts of basic skills you’ll need to succeed in career-track jobs: teamwork, efficiency, time management, following instructions, customer service. And of all the high school-friendly jobs on this list, it’s probably the most likely to offer legitimate employee benefits. Baristas are part of the BLS’s broad food and beverage service workers category.
Making the Most of Part-Time Work
Long gone are the days when the typical high school or college job provided enough income to make a serious dent in the student worker’s university tuition costs, if not cover the entire balance. I won’t go so far as to advocate writing off college and launching your “real-world” career in high school. That’s a personal choice that you’ll need to make in consultation with your parents, teachers, guidance counselor, mentors - anyone with a stake in your future. And avoiding higher education isn’t a realistic prospect for most workers in the present day. And if you do ultimately decide to pursue a career that requires a four-year or graduate degree? Your high school employment still won’t be for naught.
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