Teenagers who have found a job already this summer should consider themselves lucky.

According to a series of papers put forth by the Center for Labor Market Studies, of the approximately 1.1 million jobs created in the past six months, only about 20,000 have gone to teens.

“The job market has been falling since we left 2000, and employment has been declining year after year,” said Economics Professor Andrew Sum.

During the summer of 2000, 52 out of 100 teenagers ages 16 to 19 held a job during an average month. During the summer of 2003, only 42 out of 100 teenagers had a job, the lowest employment rate seen in the last 55 years, Sum said.

There are four major factors that determine how hard it is for a teenager to find a job. The factors are geography, family income, race and ethnicity and educational background, Sum said.

An African-American teenager living in the city with no diploma and with a low income family has an 18 percent change of getting a job, whereas a white teenager living in a suburban area with one year of community college completed and living with a family making $60,000 per year has a 65 percent change of getting a job, Sum said.

And some Northeastern students have experienced the dip in the job market already this summer.

“I haven’t been able to find a summer job yet. I think there is a drop in teenagers working because it is so hard to find jobs. Many jobs in my town go to retired people who just want something to do, or foreigners who don’t really know English,” said Megan Farguharson, a freshman journalism major.

There are four groups taking the jobs away from teenagers more now than three years ago, Sum said.

The four groups include: unemployed adults who will take any job to just keep going, college kids who have recently graduated but were unable to find jobs so they take the service and retail jobs, immigrants who are mostly under the age of 30 with limited schooling who take the fast food or landscaping jobs away from teenagers who can only work part time and older workers who are mostly women over 55 years old and who come back to the labor force taking the grocery store jobs or cashier jobs to supplement their retirement.

“I could have gone back to my old job from last summer … but I also needed to get more hours somewhere else because they would have only given me about 15 hours a week. I think it is hard to find a job this year because I explored other options and most people were not hiring,” said Michelle Seyler, a freshman criminal justice major.

Past evidence shows it takes three to four years of strong job growth to benefit teenagers, and right now we are only about two-thirds through the first year, Sum said.

The best advice Sum could give was that if teenagers live in an area like a city where it is harder to get work, then they just have to try harder and market themselves more aggressively.

-News staff writer Jen Nelson contributed to this report.