Home > Job News > Part Time/Holiday > More Young People Choosing Online Work To Earn Money < Job News and Info

New research from Barclays Life Skills has revealed that more and more young people are choosing to earn money by working online rather than taking up more traditional jobs such as part time jobs in local shops or paper rounds.

The survey canvassed the opinions of over 1,000 young people aged from 14 to 21 and the results show a shifting pattern in the demographics of work for teenagers in the UK.

Retail work was still the way that the majority of young people actually do earn money these days, closely followed by manual jobs, but the survey revealed that online work was eating into these traditional routes at an increasing rate.

More than 1 in 10 youngsters now make money online by buying and selling popular products on websites.

The biggest reason for the shift to online work for young people would appear to be the added flexibility that it offers, with more than 2 in 5 online earners offering that as their main incentive.

However, a decline in the number of traditional part time jobs in certain areas of the UK also seems to be a major factor. 1 in 5 of the young respondents said that they had no choice but to try to make money online due to a lack of other job options in their local area.

A similar proportion of young people said that they chose online work rather than traditional ‘Saturday jobs’ because it offered them more of a chance to show off their entrepreneurial spirit.

The results also provide further evidence that part time work is overall just not as thought to be as important by today’s teenagers when compared to the previous generation. Around 7 in 10 former teenagers who are now in the 38 to 58 age bracket held down a part time job while they were still in education. That ratio has now declined rapidly, with only around half of current teenagers who are in education going out to work part time.

As to why that might be a growing trend, more than 4 in 10 of today’s teenagers say they don’t want or need a part time job because they need to concentrate on their studies or that they didn’t need the extra cash because they received enough of an allowance from their parents.

Commenting on their research, the head of Barclays Life Skills, Kirstie Mackey, said: “The nature of part time jobs may have changed from 30 or 40 years ago, but they remain a crucial way for young people to strike out on their own and gain the valuable skills and experience they will need for the rest of their working lives.”

Indeed, the young people themselves backed up Ms Mackey assessment of the current climate, with one of the most popular reasons for doing some form of part time work being to improve their CVs. Many of the 14 to 21 year olds also said that ‘financial independence’ from their parents was a major incentive to go out and find their own ways of earning money.