Many people have focused on the upside of HS jobs. I don’t disagree.
However, I discouraged my kids from getting HS jobs during the school year as I wanted both to focus on excelling in school work and focused extracurriculars. In ShawSon’s case, he was partially homeschooled and had some health issues and I wanted him to retain his energy. In ShawD’s case, she needed to learn to focus and that was a significant part of her learning need. So no jobs during the year and generally no jobs over the summer during HS.
I don’t think not having jobs hurt either kid in college admissions. ShawSon got into many schools and attended one of the elite LACs over an Ivy. ShawD applied to two schools, got into both, decided to transfer and was admitted immediately to the school she transferred to.
During college, both took jobs. ShawSon asked me at the end of his freshman year what the purpose of grades were in college (he knew the purpose of grades in HS) and had worked very hard to get above a 4.0 GPA in his freshman year (and won at least one award for academic excellence). I explained that for med or law schools (both unlikely) they cared primarily about grades and board scores, for an econ PhD, they would care primarily about the grades in his hard math courses but wouldn’t care if he got a C in poetry, for business schools, I was a bit unsure how grades factored in relative to demonstrating leadership, and if he wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar, he would need to do well in everything and have a couple of professors say he walked on water on his bad days. He was working for his advisor over the summer and lined up a second research job with a psych professor during the fall of his sophomore year.
ShawD kept adding jobs (at one point she had three). We had to help her get out of old jobs before starting new ones.
I don’t think not having a HS job hurt either kid. ShawSon co-founded a tech firm as a senior in college, brought in a more experienced CEO to run the firm, left to attend one of the best schools in the world for an MBA and an MS in Computational and Mathematical Engineering, is now a co-founder of a venture backed tech firm and his net worth (on paper) likely exceeds most CC parents (and he’s been written about in a number of national publications). ShawD started work at age 23 as a Family Nurse Practitioner doing primary care and was the medical director of the clinic she was working at on the West Coast before moving east, where she is now opening up another clinic for the same company.