Walmart wants to attract teen workers with free SAT prep and college classes
Amid a tight labor market, Walmart is reaching out to high school students, offering its debt-free college benefits to teens as well as free prep for the SAT and ACT tests.
The nation's largest private employer said Tuesday that ts workers in high school may also take two to three free general education college classes through an educational startup. Walmart estimates about 25,000 people under the age of 18 work at its stores, a fraction of its 1.3 million person U.S. workforce.
The enticements are part of an expansion of a program Walmart launched last year offering affordable access to a college degree for full-time and part-time workers who have been with the company at least 90 days. Still, reaching out to high schoolers represents a challenge, given that fewer teens are entering the workforce than in previous decades due to academic pressures and an increase in summer school enrollment.
But Walmart is counting on the benefits as a way to attract high school students who are worried about the rising cost of a college education.
"We know that the cost of college remains a significant barrier for many high school students, and also leads to student loans and costly debt," Julie Murphy, an executive vice president at Walmart, told Yahoo Finance.
Guild Education
The company is working with a Denver-based startup called Guild Education that offers a program costing a dollar a day at several non-profit universities with online programs that have had success working with adult learners.
It also said it's expanding the number of degrees beyond business and supply management to an additional 14 that will include cybersecurity and computer science. Walmart says these programs will help provide workers with skills it needs in the future.
About 7,500 adult workers are already enrolled in the program. Walmart expects 68,000 of its employees to be enrolled in the next several years.
The moves come as Walmart and others seek to recruit and retain higher quality entry-level employees in a tight U.S. labor market, while looking for untapped labor pools. Teens who do want to work face competition from older workers, young college graduates or foreign workers.
In fact, only 26.4% of teens are expected to have a job by 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's down from 34% in 2014. In July 1986, 57% of Americans ages 16 to 19 were employed. The proportion remained over 50% until 2002 when it began declining steadily.
