13 Ways to Make Money as a Teenager
Teens are getting to an age where they want to start making money. They often find more interest doing chores around the house for extra money, or doing odd jobs for family members.
If you are interested in making money as a teen, here is some advice and a good list on where to get started. As your teenagers get older, we have 100 creative ways to make money.
Jobs, Hustles and Gigs for Teenagers - 14 Minute Read
Legal Limits on Teens Working to Make Money
Official money-making for teens can begin at 12 years old, within legal boundaries. The younger the child is, the more likely they can only work for family members (parents).
Federal law mandates 14 & 15 year olds cannot work more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week, and not more than 3 hours a day or 18 hours a week on school days. If it's hard for teens to get time off during the weekday, then an easy weekend job might work better for their schedule.
Restrictions for teens working are lifted once a teen turns 16. Nevertheless, minors (younger than 18) are not allowed to work before 7 a.m. nor after 7 p.m.
Most of the jobs for teens pay around $10 per hour. Teens that are getting paid $10/hour means that they can earn $1000 every six weeks, or every three weeks during summer vacation months when they have more time. Some jobs for teens are volume-based instead of time- based.
Regardless of which type of job he or she gets, to make money teens can start earning early.
Here are the types and ways for teens to make money, organized by the youngest age they can start, and how much they can make.
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Jobs for Teenagers Age 12 and Older
Written Communication Jobs for Teenagers
Reviewing music. Your 12-year old music lover can earn money as a music reviewer online with apps like Music X-ray. Kids can review music starting at $0.10 / review, with a potential to double the amount they are paid by increasing review quality and scores.
Blog writing would be a natural progression by the time he or she turns 13. Teenagers can start their own blog as a side hustle or write articles for other bloggers. Blogging as a teenager is easier when the audience of the blog is are also teens.
Delivery Jobs for Teenagers
If your kid knows the neighborhood, or you’re challenging him or her to know your area, a newspaper route could be a good starting job with good incentives.
To start a newspaper delivery route, all kids need is a bike and supervision from parents. Children can make $10.88 an hour, or from $150-500 weekly, plus tips from homeowners if the delivery includes collection of payment.
By 18, upon earning his or her driver’s license, your kid may also check out delivery driving for companies like DoorDash or Instacart for parcel or grocery items. He or she will be looking at an average income of $15.73 an hour, ranging between $14.66 to 16.81.
Retail Jobs for Teenagers
If a 12 or 13 year old child is interested in retail jobs, AND their parents are in retail themselves (own the store), you can legally hire the 12 or 13 year old to assist customers, sort inventory, clean the store, or even be the cashier. Their hourly rate would be an average of $10.66 per hour.
They can legally try out working at other stores or as retail merchandisers to those stores once they turn 14 or older, where their pay would climb to $12.72 per hour.
Performance Jobs for Teenagers
Teen modeling is also another early job for teens---and this is where their inner stylist and artist and personality can come out. Teen performance jobs have a rate of $11.43 / hour. Teens can also act in film, TV, or radio at $11 / hour. It’s both good for exposure, as well as for investment for a long-term career. Teens can get jobs to market family-friendly products and companies.
Modelling and acting jobs can be exciting for teens as their talent and looks are put on center stage. The challenge here for parents is juggling schedules (don’t let all that time in front of the camera interrupt their schooling), as well as guiding them through the more mature aspects of showbusiness.
Teaching Jobs for Teenagers
If your 12 year old is excelling academically, you could recommend he or she earn from it by tutoring younger kids or peers. Tutoring is another starter job that could build inter-personal and academic skills both for non-teaching and teaching careers. Your smart teen would be paid an average of $16.15 / hour, ranging from $11 to 21.31.
Aside from academics, this set of “junior teaching” includes practical jobs like helping people with technology (e.g. helping kids to code), or with their homework (e.g. essay writing).
Other tutoring topics include art, English, a foreign language, and music lessons, which could be done either face to face or online. The more physical jobs teens can do include teaching sports such as swimming, which pays $12.05 an hour, after obtaining a lifeguard/CPR certification by at least age 15. Other teaching and tutoring opportunities might be tennis classes or golf, among others.
More of these options become available as your teenagers approach high school age and grow more qualified. This is also a situation where the teenager can work for themselves, as a contractor, not a staffing or tutoring agency.
Assorted Service Jobs for Teenagers
Here is the broader set of jobs for teenagers in terms of options and age range. The common denominator is that to make money, teens get to work for business establishments that could be outside their neighborhood.
Your 12-year old can join a lawn care business team for an average of $14.13 an hour, ranging from $9 to almost 20. Lawn care jobs for teenagers involve yard work and basic landscaping.
Swimming pool maintenance pays a higher rate at an average of $17.70 an hour, ranging from $10 to 25.
Turning 13, your teen could sign up with on-line platforms like Errand Run, earning an average of $25 an hour, ranging from $18 to 35. This would be top earning at this age.
Turning 14, more teen jobs open up. Your “middle-schooler” could apply at the amusement park for an average of $9.98 an hour, slightly higher than the rate for being a valet parking attendant ($9.93) whose minimum age would be for 16-year old high school freshmen.
A 14-year old could also start out with office clerical work, grooming up to become a personal assistant at $18.69 an hour. Or perhaps he or she could explore the assortment of jobs for teenagers available at a golf course, from picking up balls, caddying, or course maintenance which peaks at an average of $19.20 an hour, ranging from $11.37 to $30.00.
Then when they turn 15 and decide to get a CPR certification, aside from being a swimming instructor, they could work as a lifeguard earning an average $11.29 an hour.
Your 16-year old high school freshman can experience a jump in pay rate, from parking valet to camp counsellor at $12.05 an hour in facilities that hire teenagers. Most facilities admit the youngest at 17.
Other jobs around that pay rate territory which admit the youngest at 16 are janitorial ($12.55 / hour) and mover ($13.11 / hour) ones, which are more physical. Some retailers or technology firms are able to take in 16 year olds at $16.23 an hour, but more often, they prefer 18 year olds.
Finally, 18 year old high school juniors could look into working at an Amazon warehouse for $11.74 an hour. They could also peak as part of a junk removal services team at an average of $250 per job, ranging from $150 to $350, and additional amounts if they get to sell what they haul.
Chore Jobs for Teenagers
Another set of jobs your 12-year old could do would be chores. Starting it could be the most modest and basic of all the types of jobs, but there are options for 12-year olds in which peak pay rates can exceed those of the assorted services type that are allowed by younger teenagers.
For an average of $3.12 an hour or $25 a day, ranging from $20 to 30, a pre-middle school 12-year old can do snow removal or leaf raking at $5 a bag; they can do house sitting, which can bring up the rate to $50 a day to cover overnights. Basic yard work preceding joining a lawn care team previously mentioned is at $10 an hour.
The hourly pay rates increase as teens do caretaking jobs. Babysitting pays them an average of $12.43 an hour, ranging from $10.00 to 16.13; dog-walking $13.19 an hour, ranging from $10.00 to $15.23; and pet-sitting $19.72 an hour or $37,861.00 a year.
The peak chore pay rate for 12-year olds is for house cleaning at $20.00 an hour.
Car washing is allowed from 14 years of age at $11.64 an hour.
Selling Jobs for Teenagers
Among the job types, a 12 year old’s top earnings could come from selling jobs which is a valuable skill to learn for the rest of their life.
To make money teens can begin selling seasonal consumables and useables like simple items at school, cold drinks at the park, water at events, and hot coffee in winter, among others. This is the type of jobs that are paid by volume, instead of hours. This can be a great way to get a taste of being an entrepreneur or working for themselves. At $0.50 to $1.25 per cup for instance, a teen’s earnings could average an equivalent of $90 an hour.
Earnings could increase if they sell old stuff including stock photos, whether at thrift stores or garage sales. Teenagers could even sell something as basic (but laborious) as recyclable scrap paper, from which they could earn $69 to 210 per ton of material. Selling could further be expanded if they sell things online on platforms like Bookscouter or Etsy (ergo, the Etsy Store), ebay, or even Amazon.
To make money teens can include the combination of “service-then-sell” which means creating and selling art, and designing t-shirts or clothing for example. They can sell these at school social or sporting events, then taking down orders for printing, which are subject to current market prices.
Teenagers who sell their own products door-to-door, such as their own baked cookies and cookie dough, can make a lot more money per hour working for themselves than taking a job and working for someone else.
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Jobs for Teenagers Age 13 and Older
Online Jobs for Teenagers
Your kids, who are probably digital natives, can earn online. Errand Run, mentioned earlier among the assorted services type of jobs for teenagers, is an online platform which allows the youngest account holder to be 13. However, it simply facilitates work (i.e. errands) offline.
Online jobs for teenagers (13 years old at the youngest) - could make digital designs, voiceover recordings, or do writing jobs. How much money a teenager can make has a lot to do with how efficient they are. The more efficient the teenagers are at fulfilling these online tasks, the more money they can make.
Online jobs for teenagers are found on platforms such as Fiverr, where the minimum rate is $5.00 per custom order. Pay increases depend on volume and experience, and other performance-based incentives.
Online jobs for teens sets up your early middle-schooler to have a profitable service business as a teenager; it builds high-income skills like copywriting, search engine optimization, computer programming and coding, digital advertising and marketing, bookkeeping, organic social media growth management, and sales funnel building.
In today's digital economy, these skills are very valuable and important. These online jobs for teenagers can also introduce your artist child to creative majors, degrees or educations that make real money
Participation Jobs for Teenagers
Another mode of online earning available from teens ages 13 onward is simple participation – playing games, taking surveys, watching videos (sometimes including rating them), shopping online, even simple walking, among others.
Taking surveys can earn an average of $3.00, ranging from $1 to 5 / 1000 points, by using apps like E-Poll, i-Say, MyPoints, Persky, Survey Junkie, SurveySavvy, Toluna, Treasure Trooper, or VIP Voice.
Other apps that track and reward other modes of participation include the following: Sweatcoin for simply walking; Fetch Rewards & Smart App where you earn rewards for simply using your phone to browse; Ibotta where you get paid to shop; gift cards from Amazon or Walmart; PayPal cash backs; and Swag Bucks with multiple participation modes including watching videos, taking surveys, and shopping which can earn starting at an average of $5.00 / 700 SB.
Sports Jobs for Teenagers
The next higher-earning job 13-year olds can take is with sports. Teenagers may train as junior referees or umpires who earn an average of $16.33 an hour.
Teenagers can also mentor or tutor younger kids in their sport for $10-$20/hr.
Jobs for Teenagers Age 14 and Older
Food/Restaurant Jobs for Teenagers
14-years-old is about the youngest that food or restaurant-related service types of jobs hire teens. The entry-level job for teens could be as restaurant bussers who clear tables of customers who have finished eating. Busser jobs for teens earn an average of $9.92 an hour, ranging from $8.55 to 11.29. Bussers who get good at their jobs can get promoted as waiters or waitresses earning $10.47 an hour, or as dishwashers earning $10.75 an hour.
If your middle-school teen decides to work instead at a fast food restaurant, he or she earns an average of $10.12 an hour, ranging from $8.59 to 11.66. Fast food jobs pay higher at an ice cream shop at $10.50 an hour average, ranging from $8.00 to 13.00.
The highest-paying among food-related jobs for teens is catering coordinator, a job for 16-year olds and older. He or she would answer phone calls, and prepare food and delivery at $13.26 an hour.
Jobs with positions requiring one to serve alcoholic drinks take in only 21 year olds at the youngest. A teenager working as a barista at a drink or coffee restaurant earns $10.45 an hour, and the server or host earns $11.03 an hour.
Car-Related Jobs for Teenagers
Finally, car-related services take in high school freshmen or 16 year olds at the youngest. One example is the gas attendant who earns $11.64 an hour, for health reasons related to exposure to fuel.
Most of the time, for tasks that require licensed driving and technical skill, the higher-paying among car-related jobs for teens hire 18 year olds and above. To make money teens can try car detailing. And another is the automotive technician whose duties include vehicle maintenance, diagnostic tests, as well as test drives, earning him or her $19.55 an hour.
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Summary
Teenagers can start earning early. Many of them want to experience getting their own pay instead of just staying at home without a job. There are many types of jobs they can choose to work at as soon as they're 12.
The best jobs for each age would be:
- For 12 year olds: selling jobs, then simple chore jobs.
- For 13 year olds: assorted services types of jobs and working for their parents in retail.
- For 14 year olds: jobs on the golf course.
- For 15 year olds, working as swimming lifeguards.
- For 16+ year olds, working as call center representatives at companies that allow them, or catering jobs.
The trend seems to show that as teenagers mature, their capacity to earn more shifts from what they have to what they can do; evolving from stuff to sell to skills they can perform.
