Jessica Begley is looking for a full-time job that would be a springboard for her to get into the health-care field when she completes her studies at Spokane Falls Community College. For now, however, she counts herself lucky to have joined the ranks of young employees returning to Riverfront Park this winter for another season of work in the absence of other jobs.

"I've applied everywhere," she says, but no other job offers have surfaced.

Debby Dodson, assistant manager at Riverfront Park, says Begley's experience isn't unusual. She says Begley is among about 85 percent of the park's seasonal employees from previous seasons who have returned, a significant jump from its typical 65 percent annual retention rate. While that's good for the park, it reduces the number of new positions available to teens who are entering the job market, Dodson says.

"There appears to be a lot more applicants, and we have a lot less turnover," than in years past, Dodson says.

Karen Luiten, who owns three Subway sandwich shops here, says that while she occasionally hires people under 18, she prefers adult employees because they stay with jobs longer and can be more flexible with their work hours. Also, teens under the age of 18 are regulated by stricter state laws regarding their hours, she says.

"They can't open, they can't close, and they can't be here by themselves," all of which makes it more difficult to schedule them, she says.

WorkSource Spokane's Next Generation Zone program does placement work, resume services, and workshops to help youths between the ages of 16 and 21 get work experience and training. It also provides funds to employers for employing disadvantaged youths to give them on-the-job training.

Heidi Peterson, Next Generation Zone's youth services manager, says the program has experienced a huge rise in demand for services to help youths over the past year.

"It is definitely becoming more and more difficult" for young people to find employment, Peterson says. "From what we've seen, it's been a lot harder as the economy has weakened."

Even over the recent holidays, when activity typically slows some at the Next Generation Zone, the program was hopping with requests for services, Peterson says.

"The volume is amazing," she says.

Next Generation Zone had extra money to double the size of its work experience program last summer, but still couldn't begin to meet the rising need, Peterson says.

"Normally, we serve about 450 youths a year," Peterson says. "This year, we were able to add a summer program that added just about 450 slots additionally for youths for paid work experiences. For those slots, we gave out more than 1,600 application packets" to youths interested in the program, she says.

Not only are those kids not making money to spend on movies, clothes, or music or to save for college, with the economy soft here, many disadvantaged youths need jobs to help support their families, Peterson says.

Job fields that typically have been crowded with teen workers, such as retail food services, now are filled more by adults who depend on the income they earn to support themselves and their families, Peterson says.

"We have three ladies in their 30s and 40s who've been there more than a year," says Luiten, the Subway sandwich shop entrepreneur. Out of the more than 20 employees among the three Subway locations Luiten operates, only three or four are teens, she says.

"Right now, we have just a couple of people under 18," Luiten says.

In addition to the restrictions on their schedules, the younger workers tend to leave positions sooner, adding to businesses' training costs, she says. If a well-qualified young applicant walks in at the right time and asks for a job, he or she might get hired, but otherwise, Luiten typically hires based on the recommendations of employees she already has.

When Riverfront Park, which hires many youths, held its annual job fair last spring, about 1,200 people applied for 200 positions, double the number of applications it usually receives, Dodson says.

Dodson says Riverfront Park has hired fewer people this winter because of the decreased turnover.

"We hire year-round, but this past year, we've had to do a lot less hiring than we had to in the past," she says. "We had to turn away even some of our better employees for the winter because we didn't have the turnover."

She says that among youths, college-aged students frequently have an advantage over teens because of their more flexible schedules.

Barbara Ackermann, a hiring supervisor at the park, says that though there are fewer open positions, the park still actively seeks youths to fill them.

"For a lot of what we do here, their energy level is tailored to the work," Ackermann says. She attributes the higher retention at least in part to the park's efforts to keep employees happy.

At Royal Park Care Center, a Spokane retirement center that has about 200 employees, activity director Dave Smith says he views the center's participation in WorkSource's youth employment program to be a benefit both to the facility's residents and to the youths.

Several young people at a time go through two-month on-the-job training programs at Royal Park, for which they're paid by the Next Generation Zone. He says the trainees get valuable experience, and the program gets additional assistants and the ability to try out potential future employees.

"This program is the best-kept secret around here," Smith says. Even so, there are only so many WorkSource clients that the center can hire permanently, and only a few positions that it can fill with workers under the age of 18.

"In a nursing home, it's very hard to hire someone under 18," he says. People under 18 only can work under direct supervision, and since most employees there start as on-call workers, they need to have flexible schedules, though the center does work to accommodate students as much as possible, Smith says.

Though the tighter labor market is frustrating for young job seekers, there are some definite benefits for employers like Riverfront Park, Dodson says.

They have employees with more skills and can offer them advanced training and cross training, because they've been there longer, making them more valuable and giving them good skills for the future, she says.

"It saves us a lot of time and money, in terms of training," she says.

Peterson says that right now, with shortages in available positions, Next Generation Zone is advising its clients to consider continuing their schooling and seeking apprenticeships, as well as taking part in internships and paid work experiences offered to low-income youths through its program.

"The harder part with that is it doesn't guarantee a job," at the end of the training, she says.

For its part, Royal Park Care Center offers its trainees a valuable job reference at the end of their work experience if it doesn't have permanent work for them.

"We tell them, 'Do your best and do your two months,' and we'll give them a good reference," Smith says. "It's very hard to get a job when you don't have a reference."