Over the last few years, the number of teens in the workforce, a number that was declining for decades, has reversed course.

According to the Labor Department, about 250,000 more teens, ages 16 to 19, are working now than before the pandemic, and the share of teens who had a job or were looking for one in 2023 was the highest annual rate since 2009.

Abha Bhattarai, an economics correspondent at The Washington Post, joined “Marketplace’s” Kai Ryssdal to talk about what’s behind the growth in the teen workforce. A transcript of their conversation is below.

Kai Ryssdal: What kinds of jobs are we talking about, first of all, that these teenagers are getting?

Abha Bhattarai: It’s really across the board. A lot of it is in the jobs that you would expect teenagers to have, so at retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters, that kind of thing. But we are also seeing a push from many states and cities that are creating youth employment programs and allowing teens a foot in the door for health care jobs or manufacturing, finance, things like that as well.

Ryssdal: We should point out here that the number of teenagers in the workforce has been going down for a while. So this is sort of a noteworthy change in direction.

Bhattarai: Yeah, the share of teens in the workforce has been steadily declining for a good 45 years. And that’s really started to shift after the pandemic. About 37% of teens worked last year at some point, which is quite a bit higher than the 34% we saw a decade ago.

Ryssdal: Since you mentioned the pandemic, we should say here that wages for people at the bottom end of the income spectrum — which is what most of these teenagers are, because that’s the way it goes being a teenager — after the pandemic, and you know, present-day, those wages are rising pretty fast. It’s not bad to be a teenager looking for a job right now.

Bhattarai: No, it’s really not. We’ve seen employers around the country raise their starting wages. And overall, teens have seen a 10% increase in pay in the last year, which is nearly double what other people are seeing.

Ryssdal: Make the wage and that attractiveness versus education challenge connection for me, right? Because if you can make decent money, maybe school’s not that attractive.

Bhattarai: Yeah, that’s that’s sort of the tightrope that we’re walking here. And a lot of the reason that we had this big drop in teen employment over the last several decades is because there has been more emphasis on graduating high school and going to college. It’s become harder to graduate from high school and go to college. And so teens are spending more time devoted to schoolwork and homework and things like that. We don’t know how exactly that’s playing out right now. But a lot of the teens that I talked to who had recently started working said that, you know, they’re coming out of the pandemic being cooped up at home with a year or more sometimes the virtual learning, they’re stuck with their parents, and they just really wanted to get out. They wanted that financial independence, and working, even if it’s just a shift or two a week, was a way to do that.

Ryssdal: Give me your favorite anecdote from the story, because you’ve talked to a bunch of people.

Bhattarai: I talked to a bunch of people. And I have to say the most surprising thing was talking to all these employers all around the country, and the one thing they kept saying is that these teens are great. You know, they are so different from the millennials before them. These teens are really excited, and they want shifts. So the first time I heard it, I kind of was like, “OK, whatever.” As a millennial, I was a little defensive, but I kept hearing it from every single employer.

Ryssdal: I was just gonna say, we’re gonna get some letters now from millennials, so just send it to The Washington Post. So look, demographics can be interesting, and employment trends can move around. What do you suppose the likelihood is that this trend and these numbers kind of stay where they are or get better for teenagers?

Bhattarai: Well, that’s a really good question. And the answer is, I don’t really know. It’s been a very gradual increase in the share of teens that are working, and all of that could change if the labor markets sour or if things go south. A large part of this is also that the labor market has been so tight. These employers have been so desperate for workers that they’re willing to work around high schoolers’ schedules, and they’re willing to train them and give them the amount of money that they want, which isn’t going to be the case if all of a sudden we see massive layoffs and older workers who are desperately looking for work.

Ryssdal: Yeah, I was gonna let you go, but now I’ve got one more. Give me the big-picture reason why increasing teen employment matters for everybody who’s not a teenager.

Bhattarai: You know, in the last year or two, they’ve really helped keep the service sector going. Teens are working at restaurants, at movie theaters, at stores, all of those places that have really struggled to find workers. And restaurant owner after restaurant owner told me that if it wasn’t for the high schoolers that are working after school or during the summers, they just would have had to shut down by now. And so they’ve really kept the economy going in a big way. And they’ve allowed service employers to keep hiring.