Are you a 14-15-year-old teenager looking to earn some extra cash over your summer break, or do you just want to start your career early and try out what you like? Then you have come to the right place.
In this article, we will extensively talk about ‘perfect’ summer jobs for 15-year-olds to get some extra cash. We will be going through a variety of jobs, from theater ushers to even becoming business owners. The possibilities are truly endless and depend on your capabilities.
But why even work when you are just a teenager? School and other formal education are great for making you a well-read individual. However, to maneuver in real life comfortably, learning some extra skills always comes in handy.
Jobs help you gain more experience and give you the feeling of independence, which only makes you more confident in later life. However, legally, be aware of all the provisions when starting anywhere to know your rights and laws.
Perfect Summer Jobs for 15-Year-Olds
1. Theater Usher
There can hardly be a better job for a 15-year-old than being a theater usher since ushers are responsible for running a theater successfully. They ensure that everything is in order when running shows, clearing out the doubts and queues of customers, and ensuring that the people follow the rules.
Moreover, you will be tested in a time-based manner when you will be required to supervise the cleaning of auditoriums in between shows.
Doing this job will greatly benefit your professional career as well. You are learning the skills of managing people handling multiple things at once, and constant interaction with people will surely enhance your communication skills. You should consider this job if you are dynamic and willing to take on multiple things at once.
2. Cashier
If you always wondered to yourself at a supermarket how do these cashiers even manage this much money? Then you can get a first-hand experience of it. Cashiers, as the name suggests, would require you to deal with numbers a lot.
So if you are someone who has always been good with numbers, this job is for you. As a 15-year-old looking for a job, you will be mostly employed by nearby retail stores and fast food restaurants.
This job for a 15-year-old will enrich you with money management skills, reporting, bookkeeping, and accounting. All these skills pay a lot professionally. So this will be a good platform for you to judge if this job suits you or not. It also pays decently, with the national average salary in the United States reaching up to $14 per hour.
3. Grocery Bagger
As the name suggests, this job for a 15-year-old requires bagging the groceries bought by customers and helping them manage the load and carry it to their vehicles. This is one of the rare jobs that require not much skill set but also pays decently well.
This job requires some physical fitness as you will be helping customers, carrying all sorts of bags. So, if you are planning to get fit this summer, this can be a good start, and you will even get paid decently well for it.
Organizing groceries into a bag systematically to ensure that there is minimal wastage of space requires some skills, but it’s nothing you cannot learn in just a few hours of on-the-job training. So as a 15-year-old looking for a job, being a grocery bagger is rewarding and helps you get fit as well.
4. Restaurant Host
If you have a welcoming personality equipped with a graciously warm smile, people instantly feel at ease around you because of your presence. Being a restaurant host can be a highly rewarding job for a 15-year-old.
People tip highly in restaurants and even more so if they are happy with your hosting and services. As a restaurant host, you will be responsible for welcoming customers, guiding them to the tables, managing the existing and waiting customers, presenting them with any specials and menus, etc.
Overall, it’s a dynamic job, but it’s largely a customer-facing job, which will skyrocket your communication skills, helping you in school and in your later professional life too. Over and above the salary, the tips from the customers will really help you earn that extra cash in less time.
5. Lifeguard
If you are physically fit and responsible enough to work in the public interest, then being a lifeguard is a great job for you as a 15-year-old. As you might already be aware, lifeguards are responsible for a variety of functions. For instance, I am responsible for keeping track of visitors, and ensuring everyone is following the safety rules and guidelines.
Moreover, the most critical aspect of this job is to provide emergency services such as CPR, basic medical check-ups in case of a mishap, and so on. Needless to say, this job requires training as you will be responsible for people’s lives.
However, doing this job greatly benefits you as well. It makes you a more responsible human and helps you learn some crucial life skills like providing CPR in case of emergency.
6. Dog Walker
If you love pets, especially dogs, then this job will be a source of happiness for you. There must be many homes in your neighborhood where people need a person to walk their dogs regularly.
This job arises especially when the parents of the dog are busy or elderly people live in the house who cannot walk with the dog. So this job for a 15-year-old is one of the easiest and also pays decently well. It’s a highly responsible job as some dogs take walks twice a day, and it’s crucial to their overall health.
By doing this job as a 15-year-old, you will be inculcating punctuality in your schedule, and it will also help you stay physically fit. The client will hire you as per the requirement and will tell you the dog walking requirements depending on the breed.
7. Tutor
Are you the topper of your class, or have you always scored in the top ten? Then, tutoring is another highly respectable job as a 15-year-old that you can venture into. Tutors play an important role in improving the grades of the students.
You will be tutoring students who will need some extra help outside of the traditional classroom to help them achieve good grades and enhance their overall learning. In this job, you will be tutoring on just one subject in a one-to-one setting with a student and help alleviate the doubts.
This will enhance your own learning of the subject matter, and you will be able to understand the concepts clearly. The pay that comes with being a tutor is also one of the highest paying for a teen, averaging around $25 per hour.
8. Camp Counselor
Yes, you heard it right! There are jobs for you as a 15-year-old where you can get paid to have fun. Being a camp counselor, you will be responsible for organizing and leading fun activities among the kids.
This job is a perfect fit for you only if you love working with the kids and carry a passion for imparting knowledge of a subject. This is especially important if the camps are academic-based camps. This very fun job requires multiple skill sets like managing tasks, communication skills, and so on.
The pay for this job is not bad at all. The pay averages around $14 per hour, which is sufficient for the fun that you will be having on the job.
9. Car Wash Attendant
We know that most car washes in the United States are automated now. However, they still need people to guide the cars into the installed setup. Manpower is also needed to frequently reach out to people to get them to visit your car wash.
Moreover, some car washes still function in traditional ways, where people manually wash and dry the cars. In this job, on-the-job training will be mostly provided because if things go wrong with the consumer’s car, the car wash might have to pay the damages for the same.
To perform this job well as a 15-year-old, you need nothing but optimum stamina to do the physical labor of washing the car. The pay is not bad at all, averaging around $13 per hour.
10. Mover and Packers
If you are extremely fit physically and working out is your daily go-to, then becoming a part of the Mover and Packers crew can be extremely rewarding for you. People and businesses often need movers and packers to shift locations.
You will be responsible for packing all the items securely, loading and transporting everything, and finally unloading everything in the new location.
Needless to say, it requires lifting heavy items, which will require decent physical fitness. For your hard work, the pay is $15 per hour, which is one of the highest-paying jobs you can do as a 15-year-old.
11. Being a Fast Food Worker
If you have good people skills and can run your hands quickly over a screen, then you can consider being a fast food worker in a restaurant chain near you.
As a fast food worker, your job would entail taking food orders from the people, answering the queries that customers might have regarding the food, verifying the stocks of food, and so on. This job requires a little training, as a blunder from your side might really hamper the whole business.
In addition to inculcating skills like being multi-tasked, doing this job as a 15-year-old will also enhance your people and communication skills. These skills are much needed even when deciding on a professional career later in life.
12. Gas Station Attendant
As the name suggests, this job will require you to attend the gas station and take care of a few things, like helping people to fuel up their vehicles, taking care of stock entries and register shelves, pumping gas, etc.
This job for a 15-year-old also requires you to be always on the move; hence, physical fitness should not be ignored. Moreover, this job pushes you to talk to customers often and demands multitasking, which are all crucial skills in life.
The pay is a little lower than other items on the list, averaging around $13 per hour. But getting this job when you are just 15 years old is commendable in itself.
13. Lawn Care
Landscaping the gardens is one of the most satisfying and sought-after jobs for a 15-year-old. It would require you to take care of a garden, which would include mowing lawns, trimming the plants, and other tasks with the purpose of making the lawn aesthetically pleasing and clean.
If you choose to sign up for this job, ensure that you are safe around the heavy equipment, or you might end up hurting yourself. On-the-job training will definitely be provided along with the equipment the client will provide.
Doing this job as a 15-year-old diligently would teach you gardening skills, fix up your routine and schedule, and put you in the lap of nature for the majority of your day. The pay is also decent.
14. Newspaper Delivery
If you love waking up early and naturally feel like bathing in the sun early, then delivering newspapers is not the job you should turn down. As a teenager looking for a job as a 15-year-old, you will be responsible for ensuring that the newspaper reaches the breakfast table every day within your locality.
However, please note that you will require your own vehicle to deliver the newspaper door-to-door. Also, there are no off days as such, and only certain national holidays are amiss.
However, the pay is high enough to motivate you to get to work every day. It pays a good amount on an hourly basis, which is decent enough. The benefit of doing this job is it doesn’t require much of your time, and you can even continue with this work even after your summer breaks are over.
15. Personal Assistant
As a teenager looking for a job, being a personal assistant doesn’t mean taking care of your superior tasks professionally. Rather, personal assistants take the role of helping out local businesses in their part-time administrative work and helping the elderly, which can include running errands for them and taking care of their yards.
Being a personal assistant is a dynamic job. In other words, there are no fixed timings, and the day-to-day work might also differ drastically, which will keep your job interesting enough.
It helps inculcate a sense of responsibility in you, preparing you for various challenges life might throw at a later stage. The pay averages around $34000 per annum, which is lavish enough for a teenager.
16. Retail Sales
Retail is an umbrella term, and it has many classifications under it. However, a sales job remains at the top of the pyramid. When you’re just 15 years old and looking for a job, and you get a sales job, consider it a blessing.
Since these jobs can also help you in your later professional career, this job largely includes finding customers, boosting sales by convincing them, setting up physical display ads, and overall making the store look welcoming.
Inculcating the skillset of selling the products to the customers is highly valued by business owners, whether big or small. People skills and a warm, welcoming character are essential to excel in this job. You can easily earn up to $30000 a year without the commission that you might get on successfully getting each sale.
17. House Cleaner
If a dirty room and mess make you feel uneasy, and you think cleaning brings you peace of mind, opting to work as a house cleaner is a good option. As a 15-year-old looking for a job, the tasks will not include the industrial level of cleaning where you need to indulge in harmful chemicals.
Rather, the cleaning requirement would mostly be similar to what you do at your home as well. You could also go for a freelance route, if not full-time, in this line of work.
Talking about the pay, if you are working as a freelancer, it depends on the size of the area you are supposed to clean, how dirty it is, etc. But generally, the pay rate is minimal per hour.
18. Social Media Assistant
Digital marketing is taking the world ahead by achieving unbridled success for various companies. A part of it is called social media marketing. As someone looking for a job as a 15-year-old, getting a core marketing job is tough but not impossible.
All thanks to social media, many businesses, especially small ones, prefer teens because of their familiarity with the platform. For this reason, it’s highly likely that you will be able to score a social media job even when you are just 15 years old.
Moreover, these jobs are part-time and offer up to $17 per hour, but the pay is highly dependent on your skillset. If you want to get a marketing job later in your life, this is an exceptional start for your career.
19. Video Editor
If you are into making and editing videos, so much so that it gets your creative juices flowing, then a video editing job might be a boon for you. There is nothing better than turning your hobbies into a money-making professional career, especially early in life when you are just a 15-year-old looking for a job.
This skill is very much in demand these days. Many people and production houses may be willing to give you a decent opportunity if you showcase a strong talent for editing videos and a stellar portfolio to back your claims.
Please note that in this profession, people don’t really charge by the hour. Rather, they charge per project or each video edited. However, to give you an idea, let’s just make it simple and say that you will be easily making a hefty amount per hour, making this one of the most highly paid-jobs for a teenager.
20. Receptionist
If you want a comfortable office job which requires not much travel, then being a receptionist might really suit you. As a 15-year-old looking for a job, you can be easily hired in several small businesses, enabling you to earn a decent income.
The job role of a receptionist is diverse, including dealing with customers; you might also be responsible for managing appointments, assisting customers with procedural work, and managing documentation. Overall, the purpose of the receptionist is to ensure error-free and smooth operation of work.
Being in an office job pays decently, and you get to develop your interpersonal skills and learn formal languages and tones. The pay is promising enough.
21. Youth League Empire
A position in the Youth League Empire is a position of respect for a 15-year-old looking for a job. If you are a fan of baseball-type games and are willing to spend your weekends and evenings having a lot of fun, then choosing to work as a youth league empire should be your first preference.
The work is mostly seasonal, so it doesn’t require much of a commitment. Moreover, the work is mostly done on weekends and on the evenings, leaving you enough time to pursue other interests as well.
Needless to say, the pay varies according to your league. However, generally speaking, the pay varies, which is decent enough for the work that is required.
22. Pool Cleaner
If you are lucky enough to live in an area where there is a nearby pool, then you are in luck because pool owners are mostly on the lookout for people to clean and maintain their pools in between regular intervals.
As a 15-year-old looking for a job, this is one of the easiest ways to earn some extra bucks while beating the summer heat simultaneously. The prerequisite of this job would be that you know how to swim and are comfortable dealing with physical labor jobs.
When it comes to pool cleaning, people mostly freelance for the job; however, the pay of $13 per hour is the bare minimum, and you will be able to get it quite easily. Beware that you don’t use hard chemicals without taking safety precautions, as it might affect your health in an adverse way.
23. Private Music Instructor
If you love listening to music and have a singing hobby as well, you can be a music instructor, but do remember that you have to be exceptionally good to convince someone to hire you.
It’s always helpful if you have a mastery of a certain musical instrument. Parents might hire you to improve the singing of their kids, teaching them the right techniques and guiding them to improve their mistakes, etc.
Being a private music instructor also pays decently well. For a person who is just 15 years old and looking for a job, this job is like a dream come true when it comes to earnings. You can easily make a whopping amount per hour in this profession.
24. Content Creator
In this contemporary world, being a content creator is more lucrative than some really high-paid corporate jobs that people get after years of education and experience. A successful content creator with a decent following can earn double that of a corporate employee.
Content creation is a wide field, broadly classifying it includes written, audio, and visual content. You can choose as per your area of interest as revenue will be your number one source of income other than the occasional brand collaborations.
More than that, you will be a master of your own time. Hence, it requires a level of self-motivation to start your journey as a content creator. The pay is lucrative once you reach a certain threshold. If you are a 15-year-old looking to be your own boss, definitely consider creating engaging content on the internet.
25. Business Owner
We saved the best for the last. As a 15-year-old looking for a job, why not just change the whole game and be a business owner instead? It’s doable. Entrepreneurship is a skill that no one is born with but can very well be inculcated with the right mindset and approach.
Don’t ever think about that as a 15-year-old; it’s not possible for me to start my own business. The Internet has changed many things for the good, and therefore it’s possible for you to run a profitable business online.
If you feel like your idea has potential and solves the customers’ needs, don’t hesitate to take a shot. You have nothing to lose, but if you gain success, you might hit the jackpot at such an early age. But don’t let money be your first passion; rather, let the passion drive you.
Let’s Wrap This Up
As a 15-year-old looking for a job, this article has provided you with the most options available to you. Now it’s your turn to introspect and analyze what job suits your personality the most.
The above jobs are diverse; some require a certain skill set, while others are just based on pure physical labor. The choice is yours to make.
However, let us tell you that being 15 years old and looking for a job is only worth it when it adds value to your life and makes you a responsible individual. Otherwise, taking too much stress from a job at this age just to get some extra cash might really hurt your grades, and that’s not a good thing.
If you decide to work, keep yourself updated with the laws in your state and ensure that you are legally eligible to work before moving forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a 15-Year-Old Get a Job in The US?
Yes, a 15-year-old looking for a job can be employed in certain roles. However, certain restrictions and safety measures in place are duly mentioned in Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to protect underage kids from exploitation. Normally, a person above 14 years old is allowed to work.
How Many Hours Can a 15-Year-Old Work in The US?
Certain age brackets are divided by the United States Government to safeguard kids. For instance, if you are 14 or 15 years of age, then you are not allowed to work more than 40 hours a week. Moreover, a person under the age of 18 is not allowed to work more than 8 hours a day.
