Restaurants face tighter summer hiring as teen labor pool shrinks
Restaurants are still hiring hard for summer, but the National Restaurant Association says 300,000 fewer young workers and 200,000 fewer teens are available.
The National Restaurant Association expects restaurants to add about 450,000 seasonal jobs this summer, a step down from 469,000 a year earlier and the third straight year the industry has stayed below 500,000 summer hires. The forecast lands as the pool of young workers thins, with the association saying there are about 300,000 fewer young workers in the labor force than in 2025.
That squeeze is showing up most sharply among teenagers, the industry’s most familiar summer stopgap. The association says there were 200,000 fewer teenagers in the labor force in April 2026 than in April 2024 and April 2025, and the labor force participation rate for 20- to 24-year-olds slipped to 69.6% in April 2026 from 71% a year earlier. For restaurants that lean on short-term workers to cover patios, ballgames and tourist spikes, that means a thinner bench for host stands, prep stations and closing shifts.
Teen workers still account for roughly 20% of restaurant employees, and restaurants employ about 1.9 million 16- to 19-year-olds, about one-third of all working teens. The workforce is also unusually tied to school schedules: 27% of restaurant employees are enrolled in school, and restaurant and foodservice workers are three times more likely than the overall U.S. workforce to be under age 25. That makes summer the industry’s biggest recruiting season, but also one of its most fragile.
The result is a market where operators may have to compete harder on pay, flexibility and working conditions just to keep schedules covered. For managers, that can mean fewer chaotic shift changes, faster advancement and better training if they want to hold onto line cooks, servers, bartenders and hosts who can choose among multiple offers. For workers, tighter supply can mean more leverage in the short term, especially in markets where summer demand spikes faster than staffing can keep up.
The strongest proportional hiring gains are expected in Maine, Alaska, Rhode Island, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New Jersey, where seasonal restaurants and summer tourism drive demand. Some markets may also get a lift from international visitors tied to the FIFA World Cup in June and July, but that will not erase the broader labor squeeze. A year ago, the association projected 490,000 summer jobs and pointed to 6.2 million teens in the labor force, the highest level in more than 15 years. This summer’s forecast shows a tighter market, where the easy assumption that teenagers will always fill the rush no longer holds.
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