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You never know where a summer or after-school job will lead a kid — even if that kid is named Mike Bloomberg.
At a press conference yesterday promoting the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program, the mayor recalled how he was inspired to apply to Johns Hopkins University by a supervisor at a small electronics shop where he worked as a teenager after classes.
The rest, of course, is history.
Bloomberg was accepted by Hopkins, landed a job on Wall Street and subsequently came up with an idea that evolved into one of the world’s most successful companies — Bloomberg LP.
“Sometimes, summer jobs can really start you on a career path,” the mayor said at the Queens Botanical Garden, where 35 of the 29,300 kids who landed city-sponsored summer jobs this year will be working.
“That was true for me . . . That certainly made a big difference in my life.”
As usual, demand for city summer jobs was so great that less than a quarter of the 132,000 applicants who applied in a lottery made it through. Officials said the only recent year when extra jobs were available was 2009, when federal stimulus funds allowed the city to find slots for 52,000 youngsters.
The seven-week jobs pay the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour for 25 hours a week, with 40 percent of the positions allocated to day-care centers and summer camps.
The benefits last well beyond the summer, according to city officials, who cited an NYU study showing that students in grades 8 to 11 who worked during the summer of 2007 increased their school attendance the following year and were more likely to take Regents exams.
Other research found both higher graduation rates and earning capacities post-high school.
Two top city officials who joined the mayor at the press conference — Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Youth Services Commissioner Jeanne Mullgrav — reported that they, too, had worked summers while in school.
About $3 million of this year’s $46 million program was set aside for new career and educational initiatives, including one where about 1,000 students in the South Bronx will receive an additional five weeks of schooling, another where 100 kids will work as interns for tech companies, and another where 250 students will be employed directly by companies.