I think the most important issue for all of us is our economy and jobs and creating opportunities for young people to be able to get the education that you need to be able to afford to go to college.
Secure for young people the right to education and to full-time work.
Modern ingenuity has made it possible for a child to run some of the machines and the child will get the job while the men must tramp.
As soon as I left school at 16, I worked in a factory making aircraft components.
When I was 13, I worked for Western Union. When the telegrams came in, I would glue them on the paper and deliver them on my bicycle.
They [Mc Donalds] take people and give them a first job, which enables them to get a second job. They do a very good job of educating troubled young people to be good citizens and they're probably more successful than charter schools.
I believe that children should not be made to work.
It is very important that our young people have constructive early work experiences. But it is equally important that their jobs are safe and complement their education, rather than complete it.
When I was a kid, I worked as a clerk at my parent's motel. From when I was eight or nine, I rented rooms, helped with laundry, folding tons of towels. And then I also worked at my dad's gas station more as a young adult and as an adult.
Let me make it clear that the Youth Employment Opportunities Act of 1961 is not primarily concerned with delinquency prevention. Rather, it is designed to help all types of young men or women who suffer deficiencies of training or opportunity which keep them unemployed.
Starting my career as a kid, I was doing what jobs I got.
Even as our economy starts to pick up, and new jobs are created, there is a risk that young people in Britain won't get the chances they deserve because businesses will continue to look elsewhere.
War at home is matched by a war on youth. I wrote about this recently. Young people graduate with an average of $23,000 in student loan debt, and they are the ones saddled with it. Youth have become indentured servants and that turns them away from public service.
I haven't stopped working since I was 10.
When I left school at 16, I became an apprentice television and radio technician, and was paid £17 a week, which was decent money in 1976. But the job turned sour when I gave myself an electric shock while repairing a television set.
I've been working since I was five!
The jobs outlook in the U.S. isn't very good. And it's really about young people.
You know what, I'd done an interview show when I was like 16 or 17. One of my first jobs. I did interviews for this television show in Toronto.
It's about businesses nervous about taking on school leavers because of a mass of red tape. It's about health and safety regulations and green fines.
I went to work at 11 years old. I became governor. It's not a big deal. Work doesn't hurt anybody. I'm all for not allowing a 12-year-old to work 40 hours. But a 12-year-old working eight to 10 hours a week or a 14-year-old working 12 to 15 hours a week is not bad.
I got a job when I was 15 because my allowance was about $20 a week which in New York was impossible. So I used to waitress across the street from where I grew up.
These days kids get paid enough that they probably don't need to work too much. The problem is when the person is old enough that they need to work to make a living, and the only thing that they know how to do is what they are already washed up in.
Unfortunately, we have a 50% unemployment rate among our urban youth of color. It's not about making green jobs more attractive. It's about making them more available. And that requires Congress passing legislation that will give a real break to the people who want to introduce new technologies to the American marketplace.
Certainly other things we can do, we gotta promote after-school employment, give kids an opportunity, raising the minimum wage was part of that, we can't expect that young people are going to feel they can make a living out there for such low wages.
My first job was working Saturdays in Sports Soccer in Newcastle. I only used to work three or four hours a week, so it wasn't a huge amount, but I do remember spending the first pay I got on a new pair of trainers.
