For the first time on record, senior citizens outnumber teens in the labor force as the Great Recession accentuates trends that make it harder for young people to find jobs and more likely for older workers to delay retirement.

This historic crossover is revealed in data compiled by Bloomberg News showing that 6.6 million people over age 65 worked or looked for work in the first six months of the year, versus 5.9 million 16- to 19-year-olds.

That analysis is based on federal records that started in 1948 when there were 4.4 million teens in the labor force compared with 2.9 million people over age 65.

Experts say that over the past decade older workers have tended to hang on to their paychecks longer, owing to sagging stock portfolios and falling home prices.

This shift toward an aging workforce has been disastrous for 16- to 19-year-olds, who face unemployment rates of 25 percent nationwide and 34 percent in California, similar to the Great Depression.

"It's killing kids," said Andrew Sum, director of the center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "We're tossing our future into the trash bin."

Economists agree that youngsters, especially those who lack college degrees, need entry-level jobs to help them acquire the discipline, confidence and motivation they need to succeed later in life.

Slammed hard

The recession hurts.

"Young people, as is always the case, get slammed hard because they are last hired, first fired," said Heidi Shierholz with the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

Some economists argue that high rates of teen unemployment make it time to rethink minimum-wage laws that put youngsters at a disadvantage compared with older workers who may compete for the same jobs.

For instance, the Bloomberg data cited a Labor Department report on employment trends in food preparation and serving - a strong teen job sector. From 2000 through 2009, the report found that employment among 16- to 19-year-olds fell by 242,000 jobs while the number of workers 55 and older increased by 128,000.

"We need to create a lower minimum wage for teens to lower the cost of hiring and training entry-level employees," said Michael Saltsman, a research fellow at the conservative Employment Policies Institute. "What we would get for this is more jobs for our teens to learn career skills."

Such a policy is anathema to Shierholz, who thinks a better way to improve job prospects for younger workers is to make Medicare and full Social Security benefits available at age 64 for the next two years to coax more older workers into retirement.

Sum, the academic expert, argued for wage subsidies for employers who hire teens and better school-based programs to help young people find jobs.

Young people at work

Some Bay Area youths have already benefited from such efforts.

Sierra Faulkner, a 17-year-old student at Albany High School, parlayed a job-shadowing day at Chez Panisse in Berkeley into an unpaid internship at the internationally renowned restaurant. "I get paid in knowledge," said Faulkner, who said her once-a-week restaurant gig has taught her how to work at a fast pace.

Cherisha Leung, a 20-year-old resident of Noe Valley in San Francisco, said she went looking for her first job at age 15 and ever since has worked through programs like Enterprise for High School Students and the United Way to find everything from odd jobs to career-track training.

This summer she is working as a paid intern at a real estate firm where she's getting exposure to her planned career in design and communications.

"Little things here and there have built me into a pretty well-rounded individual," she said.

Online resource

See Bloomberg's interactive graphic on workers over 65 competing with teens for jobs at www.bloomberg.com/insight/teens.html.