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Jeffrey Welsh has worked three years in catering, but now the 17-year-old Attleboro High School junior wants to move into carpentry - and is getting nowhere.

"I want to be a firefighter but I want to first go into construction," he said. "You can make good money in construction.

"They tell me that they're not looking, but they'll try to fit me in. Then they don't call back."

It's a frustrating but familiar scenario for teen job-hunters everywhere.

The summer of 2008 is predicted to be the worst for teen employment since the government began tracking it in 1948. And the job slump is manifesting itself at the most local of levels.

Last year the high school's School-to-Career Partnership found 75 paid positions for Attleboro students through the Hire-a-Teen program. This year it secured only 50.

Welsh has been working with the Partnership to find a job, and so far he is among the unlucky ones.

"It's not because the employers were unhappy with our students. On a whole, we always have good responses," said Christine LaChance, the School-to-Career Partnership's director.

Nor is it because teenagers have less desire to work this year.

Sandra Parsons, a career specialist at Attleboro High School, noted that her summer program, which combines MCAS tutoring with employment, can be used as an incentive for studying.

Attleboro High School also runs after-school programs that train students for the application and interview processes.

Yet, area teens can expect to fill out ten applications before finding a job, LaChance said.

Job hunting is never easy in an economic slowdown, but experts say it can be particularly tough for teens.

"When the economy goes into recession teen employment is always hit the hardest," said Andrew Sum, an economist with the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. In fact, statistics show that teens have not benefited from recent economic recoveries.

According to a study of the 2008 summer teen job market by Sum and his colleagues, 10,000 fewer teenagers were employed at the end of 2007 than were in 2003. Yet, during the same period, total employment nationwide increased by 8.7 million.

Teen unemployment currently stands at 55 to 65 percent, and it can lead to some vicious cycles.

Welsh pays for the insurance on his 1994 Dodge Intrepid, as well as gasoline, which is going up in price every week.

The problem is, if he doesn't have a job, he doesn't have a car - and if he doesn't have a car, he doesn't have a job.

Welsh is not alone.

Nick Danho, a recent Bishop Feehan High School graduate, says he is having a hard time finding a new job, even in fields that traditionally have been a refuge for teen employment.

Like Welsh, Danho was employed at the same job for most of his high school career. In his quest for a new one, he has applied to at least 10 restaurants and retail stores.

"They all say that it is hard enough to get hours, as it is, and they'll call me if a position opens," he said. "But it doesn't seem like any are going to open.

"I'm saving for college, that's the main thing. Financing and spending money," said Danho, who will start at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., this fall.

In an economy flanked by layoffs and downsizing, the experts say teenagers cannot compete with older, experienced workers who are settling for lower-paying jobs, including part-time work, typically filled by teens.

And mature workers are trying to hang on to those jobs longer at a time when the loss of American spending power is deflating sales at retail outlets, one of the top employers of teens.

The implications also go further than less pocket money in teens' jeans.

LaChance worries that students won't be able to develop a proper work ethic before becoming independent.

"It's not so much about specific skills," she said. "It is about what we call the soft skills - handshakes, answering phones, responding on the phone, the fact that you do have to come in every day.

"Those skills alone help them to continue to be successful. They have a bank of skills behind them."

By the time students reach an age when they have to support themselves, they may be ill-prepared to do so, she said.

The problem is multiplied if teens become unaccustomed to work, and thus not inclined to seek it - something experts call "path dependency."

It means that events are dependent upon what happens in earlier years, Sum said. Teens who do not work at 16 are not very likely to do much work at 17, for example.

On the other hand, Sum said, if teens work at 16, not only are they more likely to seek work in the future, they get the added benefit of being able to demand a higher wage based on their previous experience. And that benefit continues year after year.

But in a troubled economy, getting a foot in the door could be so discouraging that there isn't a strong incentive for teenagers to keep seeking work.

"Unlike adults who are on unemployment services and will keep looking for work to collect their unemployment checks, kids tend to stop looking because there's nothing for them and no unemployment help," Sum said.

Welsh and Danho both started working early, around the age of 14, which for them set up a positive attitude toward work even in bad times.

Welsh has car payments and gas money to worry about, of course. But he said the desire to work is really much more fundamental.

"I like to work," he chuckled. "It keeps me out of trouble."