Hire a Teenager This Summer

Gary North - May 12, 2018

Last week, the man who mows our lawn in the summers called my wife. He said that one of his employees had quit, so he was cutting back on customers. He told my wife she was one of the customers who was being dropped.

The man is a business idiot. Most of the people who are involved in lawn care have no economic sense. My wife has hired several of them. They are unbelievably ignorant about the basics of running a business.

It is so expensive to get a new client, and it is so easy to find a replacement at $15 an hour, that anyone involved in lawn care who doesn't find a replacement in order to keep all of his clients happy is an ignoramus regarding basic business economics. It is mind-boggling. It is also common. My wife bought an Ego electric lawnmower, trimmer, and a 3-year warranty. She paid about $700. She hired my 14-year-old grandson to come in and mow the lawns every week.

On his first day, he did back and front in about an hour. He is going to have to learn to do trimming a little better, but he will soon learn the basics of mowing a lawn. After a year, he may know enough to branch out and find people in his subdivision who would like to have him come in and mow . . . cheap.

At that point, I will offer him a deal. I will buy an electric mower. He will keep it at his house. I will rent it to him. This would be a good summer job. He homeschools in the summer, but this would be a good morning job before it gets too hot.

I would rather pay him to do the work than pay a third party. He gets experience. I think he will be more predictable. If he isn't good at it, my wife will fire him. She will find somebody else.

In the coming recession, men who now earn a middle-class living by mowing lawns will find themselves facing heavy competition from unemployed men who can scrape together enough money to buy a commercial lawnmower and a hauling unit for the back of a car. This is a business with easy entry and no government regulations. There will be competent people available to do this work, beginning six months into the recession.

Most workers don't how to go out and generate jobs. An entrepreneur knows how to do this, and that's why he doesn't have to mow lawns. He hires people to mow lawns. The recession is going to make it a whole lot easier to hire people who mow lawns.