No one wants to return to the days when children worked full-time on the farm or in factories at the age of 12. But many parents have swung to the opposite extreme in the past decade or two, shielding even their oldest children at home from paid work altogether. In 1998 about 45 percent of American kids ages 16 to 19 had jobs of some sort, roughly where the number had been for half a century. But not long after, that number fell off a cliff and just kept falling. By 2013, just 20 percent of teens had jobs, an all-time low since the United States started keeping track in 1948.
