Paper round is slave labour!

Another thought:
Visit neighbours and ask if they will collect any aluminium cans for him, or on bin night, ask if he can look through their recycling bin. Squished can can be taken to scrap yards. It might only be 80p a kilo, but would add up of the street knows he is collecting them.

I had a job, aged 13, in 1976. I was paid £2.44 for four hours hoovering, dusting and cleaning the windows of the pub next door, at the weekends.

That would be £22.44 a week or £5.61p.h in today's money.. My commute time was 30 seconds. When I was 16, I managed to get HP on a moped on the basis of it. 😊

Maybe your dc could look for something much closer, cleaning patios, car washing, dog walking, mowing lawns etc. Do you have any elderly ladies nearby who need some help?

I did a paper round in 2004 and got £14 per week. It wasn’t many houses but the cycling kept me very fit.

I also worked in a sweet shop, £20 for a Saturday shift 8-5.30 and did a free paper round too once per week, that paid about £5 for 160 houses!

It wasn’t amazing money even in 2004. It was quite character building though. But I’ve always been willing to do pretty much anything for some spare cash!

My 14 year old did the FA referee course and earns £30 a game. He made £120 last weekend! Would that be an option?

My son was 14 when we started and we live in London. He did a paper round 7 days a week for 18 months and never missed a single round! He got paid £3 for a week day and £5 for a week en day so £25 a week, £100 a month, and he minted it in at Christmas (about £150 in tips). He loved it but gave it up when he started GCSEs. My daughter then attempted it and lasted 4 days. It all depends on the child!

I recall you earlier thread OP. At least he has a months worth of work experience as a start.

-At 14 I started working in a pharmacy on Saturdays. We had delivery boys who used to drop regular meds off to the elderly on their bicycles. This was many years ago, and likely not allowed now, because I'm sure the boys were only 13
-car washing was another idea
-Bin cleaning? Apparently people do pay to have their wheelie/recycling bins cleaned out.

I did a paper round in the late 90s that paid £10 a week - it was horrible. I’m now a teacher and barely any kids have a job (including most sixth formers I know). I certainly won’t be encouraging my kids to get jobs until they’re older, there are much happier and more valuable ways to spend your teens.
A few 16-18 year olds near me banded together and offered gardening services at £15/hour. Lots of take up, they managed their own business and it didn’t feel exploitative- maybe something like that would work for your DS in the future?

Should also have said - I had to do 2 rounds on the milk run on a Saturday as we didn't deliver milk on Sundays. But that was ok and the tips from both the paper round and the milk round were great to get at Christmas. People on my rounds ( both were basically exactly the same area) were generous tippers in those days

£30 a week here (for 5 days). I’m amazed there is so much variation!

In 1967 I was paid 10 shillings a week for my paper round. I just checked and that 10 shillings a week would be equivalent to about £9.55 per week in 2025. So actually he was being better paid than I was!! But it was always thus. No such thing as minimum wage etc. Doesn't make it right, but I was pleased to get the money!!

I jumped ship after a year and did a local dairy's milk round instead, which paid 12 shillings and 6d instead. The round was easier as we had a wee cart to push with the milk bottles in it - so not as heavy work. Some newspapers were very heavy to carry in a bag and if you were having to go up to the top floor of the tenement flats, it was much harder work!

I am genuinely gobsmacked that a legit, well established and national company, the post office, is exploiting kids in this way!

The Post Office as a company does not sell newspapers, or employ paper boys, just to clarify that. Each local village newsagents/shop with a Post Office counter, will be run by the business owner not the Post Office.

Our local one pays around £25K a week for 6 days and they employ 4-5 paper boys/girls who all seem to stay until they leave school.

There's a lad who loves near us who is about 15 and he washes and valets cars from his home. So people drop their car there and he does them. He's always got different cars there. No idea how much he charges. Could he do something like this?

If one of my teenaged neighbours were doing this I’d happily give them a 50% cut (or perhaps more, no idea what’s fair) if they took my stuff and sold it. I’m never going to have time to do it myself.

My paper is deliver by a retired chap who likes to be up and about early!

Isn’t part of it doing it for the Xmas tips? I’ve no idea what mine gets paid but I know I give £20 at Xmas and I suspect most houses on the route do that too.

i do think we need to make it easier to employ children. I totally disagree with the previous poster that 13 is too young to work. I’m a farmer and young farmers often have a cracking work ethic precisely because they learn the value of hard work young.

I’m quite surprised it hasn’t gone up a bit more. That’s the same wage I got back in the very early 2000’s.

Could you set him up a vinted account so that he can sell any unwanted bits and pieces on there? Ours just uses an Amazon lock box for delivery and there is one at our local station so it is super easy to get the parcels dropped off.

I did one 6 days per week in the 80’s and got £1.80 per week. Some nights they were so heavy I went over my handlebars with them. At Christmas I got £36 in tips -£1 from every house, I felt like I’d won the lottery 😂

The margins are tight. Tbh I did it as parents couldn't give me any money so it was my only source of pocket money.

Of course it’s a terrible rate of pay, I don’t know why people are bending over backwards to justify it. Should be £5/day minimum, even for a child.

DS did 6 days a week, 20 mins a day, 6 days for £20. He was happy enough but it was a killer in the cold and dark.
He used to get around £150 in Christmas tips though!

My DS gets £15 per week for his paper round, but it only takes him 15 mins on his bike, so that's an equivalent hourly rate of £12ph. Pretty good.

That feels very low. I got £11 a week for my morning paper round in 1988, and then after a few years I got an extra tenner a week to mark up the papers for everyone.

Pay was shit in the 70's too.
Only advantage was probably that more people read newspapers daily, so the houses would have been closer together.

When our friends son was asking about jobs in small local, and larger town centre shops, he was basically told they wouldn't hire him until he turned 16 which was down to insurance /payments for those under 16 being different. Another friends daughter couldn't even get work experience in year 10 due to this reason (no family/friends to help)
There's also the reason that many jobs done by teenagers have now been taken by adults unable to find a job/needing a second income for CoL.

Hopefully someone might have some ideas.

But the shop also charge for delivery, albeit not much.