Study Indicates Sources for Teenage Spending
As a follow-up to the last column about teenage workers, a study by the Harrison Group and reported in USA Today (
The source for this money comes from parents either as part of family expenses (over 50 percent) or allowances based on “chores” (about 10 percent). Earnings from jobs accounts for less than 20 percent of teens disposable income.
Knowing that school achievement studies suggest that students who work have less success at school than their non-working counterparts, does it make sense for teenagers to work? Does having less than 20 percent discretionary income to spend on the aforementioned categories make a teen’s life incomplete?
Again the key question remains: are communities really interested in promoting academic achievement or do they prefer a cheap labor force?
(Note: teens that work to support family financial needs are not the targets of this curiosity. And there’s a good chance those teens were not the subjects of the above study. Asking teens to carry the burden of helping families pay for food or a utility is a community issue that needs a solution. Otherwise, communities are guilty of promoting generational poverty that will continue adding to the ranks of under-educated and under-prepared persons unable to cope with requirements of the service economy.)
Growing Business
An annual survey of CEOs completed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers revealed the following regarding how they plan to grow their respective businesses:
~~ Over half (57 percent) will focus on new markets, mergers and acquisitions, new products and innovation;
~~ About a fourth (23 percent) will focus on better penetration of existing markets for existing products; and,
~~ About 16 percent will focus on better customer service and employee retention.
What this data should suggest, if you are currently employed and want to advance (or if you are unemployed and want to be hired), that you need to focus on creating or exploiting opportunities that builds new business for your employer. Clearly, 80 percent of CEOs want ideas to improve the financials of their company by increasing customer base.
CEOs are not saying they want leadership, problem-solving, critical thinking, more communication skills or other such ideas commonly promoted in business literature or by “gurus”. They want to know how to “get” and sell to customers.
This means you need to be creative and exploit technology to expand the number of customers. Or, use your creativity to develop the next social network website, the next video gaming system or the next high performance, high mileage car.
Companies focus on the bottom line so prepare to address that basic need. Here’s a hint: look at social trends. For example, the US Census projects that the number of people ages 65 and older in the labor force will double over the next 10 years. How would you get your company ready to absorb workers represented by this age group? If you are unemployed, how do you position yourself as an expert to offer training and development for people who want to return to the workforce?
Staying employed and enjoying a satisfying lifestyle is easy if you know how to create profit!
You Knew This!
The estimated number of hours the average American spends using various types of media is:
TV @ 1555 hours
Radio @ 974 hours
Internet @ 195 hours
Reading a newspaper @ 175 hours
As long as TV, with its ever increasing time devoted to commercials promoting the insatiability of consumerism, dominates people’s free time, can we really expect this country to maintain its position as a major economic and critical thinking power?
GROWTH <> LEADERSHIP <> EXCELLENCE
© 2007 3 Minute Learning LLC
