Cambridge stores staffed by immigrants; Cincinnati suburbs run by high school kids

by philg

My lust for the smell of burning kerosene has driven me to spend a lot of time in the suburbs of Cincinnati. All of the stores and restaurants in Cincinnati seem to be staffed by high school students. This probably doesn’t seem unusual to the average American, but it struck me because I couldn’t remember ever seeing a Cambridge Public School student working an after-school or weekend job. Stores and restaurants in Cambridge seem to employ adults, often recent immigrants.

I can’t figure out what would account for the huge observed difference. It can’t be that Cambridge High School students are spending all of their time studying because they consistently score very poorly on achievement tests. Nor do I think that it is a question of household income because the Cambridge High School serves a lot of teenagers whose parents are on welfare, living in city-owned housing, etc. (after the chucking of an honors program, the higher-income parents moved their children to private schools or moved the entire family to Brookline or Newton).

If I go to a supermarket in Cambridge on a weekend, why don’t I see a Cambridge High School kid working the checkout?

10 thoughts on “Cambridge stores staffed by immigrants; Cincinnati suburbs run by high school kids”

  1. I’m not from Cambridge so don’t know your city’s laws, but I’d bet there are high minimum wage laws there. This would price out entry-level workers from getting jobs.

    (Most minimum and near-minimum wage workers are high-school students; once someone has the chance to start with a lower-wage job, they tend to move up quickly. Some cities–those where the leaders don’t have an understanding of basic economics–impose high minimum wages. This mostly serves to keep teens out of learning about the real world and keeps workers who are starting out from getting on the ladder.)

  2. Is it possible that there is just less availability of immigrant labor in Cincy? If immigrant adults are available at roughly the same salary then I would think the adults are more desirable. Maybe the question really is do immigrants really prefer the Boston area over Cincinnati? Housing prices for one would seem to suggest the opposite.

  3. Overall, the standard of living in Cambridge is much higher than in Cincinnatti…however, if you manage to go to Lynn or to Worcester, you may very well find high school students, as well as, college students and your share of immigrants working in the retail sector.i.e. supermarkets and so forth.

  5. I grew up near Cincy (where our high school valedictorian from the class of 1997 worked at McDonalds), and indeed most restaurants and stores were staffed with high school kids. That’s because the number of immigrants in the area is relatively few.

    Consider these differences from a shopkeeper’s perspective:
    1) Immigrants can work full-time or more.
    2) Immigrants have a better work ethic and stick around longer than high school kids.
    3) Immigrants are more likely to show up for work on time (see #2).
    4) Immigrants, especially at stores/restaurants with foreign themes, will be able to speak the primary language of some customers better than high school kids.

    Given the choices, shopkeepers/managers would prefer to hire immigrants — there just aren’t that many in the Cincy area (though there are more there now than when I was growing up 20+ years ago.)

    -Erica

  6. I know where they are – babysitting!

    My son (13 yrs old) just did one of his first babysitting jobs this weekend. For watching two kids for 2.5 hours he got $20. That tops minimum wage in many areas, and the work’s not too tough, either.

    Mind you, this is in an average, middle class Chicago suburb as well. I never sniffed minimum wage while babysitting “back in my day”.

    Chuck

  7. I wonder if it has something to do with Cambridge being an illegal immigrant sanctuary city. Store owners don’t have to pay payroll taxes or even minimum wage to illegals. Much cheaper labor. Illegals make more compliant workers because they can always be threatened exportation. Sanctuary means that store owners don’t have to worry about police or other authorities harassing them for their illegal deeds if they are doing this, except for the IRS, the IRS trumps all.

  8. Where I live, about 10 miles North of Cambridge, nearly all of the local convenience stores are “owned” by immigrants. Most sound like they are from India or its neighboring countries. You don’t see local kids working there because the immigrants work long hours and when they need help at the store, it stays within the family.

    It’s possible the Massachusetts environment/laws etc are more immigrant friendly.

  9. A friend of mine owns a chain of convenience stores and he says that his last ditch hire (his description) is a high schooler. He says the ones who are worth employing simply will not take the job and the ones that do usually end up getting fired or quitting very quickly. His daughter is a lawyer who oversees a bit of the hiring and she says in general, most of the teenagers they employ today wouldn’t have even made it past the initial job interview ten years ago.
    Either way, he says today’s minimum wage hires that work out well tend to be immigrants.
    In my own experience of being raised on a farm, when I was a kid (many years ago) we had only kids to help us. Now-a-days that’s unheard of. Teenagers just won’t work on farms and every bit of the seasonal labor comes from…you guessed it: immigrants.
    I think they are more dependable than today’s youth.

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