How AI is shrinking the job market for teens

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• 00:01

  NPR.

• 00:11

  This is the Indicator from Planet Money.

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  I'm Waylon Wong.

• 00:15

  And I'm Stephen Massaha.

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  And it is Jobs Friday, the first one of the new year.

• 00:21

  The Bureau of Labor Statistics is getting back to its regular release schedule after the disruptions from the government shutdown.

• 00:28

  Today, the BLS published numbers for December.

• 00:31

  The U.S.

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  economy added 50,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.4%.

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  But the BLS also revised their figures for October and November.

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  The economy added 76,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.

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  This shows that the labor market kept cooling at the end of 2025.

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  Looking at specific industries, food service jobs were up in December, while retail jobs went down.

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  These are both sectors where some people are getting supplanted by machines.

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  Think fast food counter workers or cashiers.

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  These are jobs you might associate with the economy's youngest workers, teenagers.

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  So what does the future of teen employment look like?

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  One California high school student has crunched the numbers.

• 01:20

  I think an AI tsunami wave is going to come regardless and it's going to drastically change our lives.

• 01:25

  I guess the question that we're trying to answer is not how to prevent this from happening,

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