Paper round is slave labour!

At 13 he needs to be doing chores/odd jobs for you or your friends. Businesses can't/won't take him on because it's not cost effective to insure someone of that age to work, as well as there being a lot of rules about what work a child can do, for how long, with how many breaks etc. It isn't feasible to get a P/T job until at least 16.

Babysitting?

It’s not “slave labour”, he’s not being forced to do it 🙄

Paper rounds have always been underpaid as there are very few jobs available to under 16s and they are not subject to wage protection - as a way of protecting underage children from being pushed into the workplace.

If he really wants to make some money, how about odd jobs for friends and neighbours such as car washing, weeding, shopping etc?

Paper rounds have always been like this, When I had one we were paid a set amount per house we delivered to.

The difference is that nowadays so few people get papers delivered that the distance between houses is much bigger and so the round takes longer. I used to do around 70 houses each morning but they were all within 3 or 4 streets so I probably walked half a mile in total.

Apologies -- unintentional strikethrough and too late to edit! My point was just that there were lots of jobs open to a child of that age when I was 13, probably equally exploitative, but there were lots of options, so you were less tied to a single option. And yes, as the mother of a 13 year old, the idea that in the days before mobiles, parents would go away for the weekend, leaving their 3 young children with me, now blows my mind.

Paper rounds were a right of passage when I was young with hoards of kids cycling away from the newsagents every morning & evening, all with a white (or later) yellow bag slung across their back.
Most runs were 1hr but for your 50p/week you did both a morning & afternoon run.
Parents helping out was never seen and if you were sick, a mate did it for you.

I bucked the trend and worked in the local butchers shop (sweeping, washing up, cleaning the windows etc) and although it was a lot more hours, I received the grand sum of £4/week (which did not go up in 3yrs).😆

Lawnmowing is the way forward I think.

I also had various exploitative jobs in the 90s. Awful.

No one employs children for anything else as its recognised that children are open to exploitation. (Which you've just described paper rounds as...)

Paper rounds have always been like this, paid in pennies, that's why there are so few now, also massive decrease in newspaper sales, and many vacancies for those willing to give it a try.

Around here, pay is £20-30 per week but does vary. Ds' forst attempt was £30 but it was a 10 mile route and he bad to leave the house before 6am to manage it! His second was £25 and took an hour only but it was 6 days not 5. So bad pay, but not as bad and a lot more convenient.

It's definitely basically slave labour though.

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

I imagine this is a village shop/newsagent that also hosts a Post Office counter. The village I grew up in had a business like this. She had two counters - one was the counter where all Post Office business was transacted and the other was the counter for shop business.

The Post Office themselves won't have anything to do with newspaper delivery, that will be part of the other non-PO bit of the business.

Yes, exactly. I'm 52 and there were loads of (also exploitative) job opportunities for that age when I was 13 I worked behind the deli counter in the local shop, did FT summer holiday childminding, babysat nights and weekends, did glass collecting in a bar, picked fruit. None of those would be open to a 13 year old now. I agree that lawnmowing, carwashing, plant watering etc for neighbours would be a good place to start certainly a couple of DS's friends (who are 13) do this.

Tbh i don't think a 13 year old should be working, it's too young. And really as a parent you shouldnt have encouraged him to think working at 13 was realistic - the demands on kids these days are pretty high in terms of school and homework, plus come on, times have changed, we recognise using children for labour isn't a good thing?
Maybe try and reset his expectations a bit as its much more realistic for him to consider a job at 16.

Do you have neighbours with small children? Unfortunately the family have now moved away, but last summer I paid next door's teen £10 per hour to come round and entertain my kids in the garden for a couple of hours a morning while I worked upstairs.

I wouldn't leave a 14yo in sole charge of small children, but if he's good with them, offering to entertain them while parents are wfh might be a bit of a money-spinner.

At 13, I very much doubt there be anyone rushing to employ him. If he wants to earn, he needs to come up with a way to make some money. Mowing lawns? Washing cars? Helping out a neighbour with odd jobs? Even something like opening an online shop (buy something in bulk and sell on eBay) with your help?

There are two lads in our local town who started a mobile car wash/valeting business. I think they only just did their GCSEs last year so they must have been young when doing it (they took a few weeks off ahead of exams I remember) and they seem booked up most afternoons and weekends.

I've voted YABU as I used to have a paper round and have fond memories - didn't even know they were still a "thing!" 😁
They've always not been much pay, even at the end of the 80s.
It's character building and gives you good work ethics.
Especially when it's property supplement or TV mag day and it's like you're carrying a brick on your bike 😂
Kids nowadays, too bloody soft, probably get driven round if it starts spitting with rain 😁
<ducks>

That's ridiculous. My friend did a paper round in 2003 and it was £15 a week

Our local post office is posting on FB begging people to take up their paper round and have no takers - this is exactly why! It used to be very young kids who did it when I was young (80s), kids of around 12 who would have been too young to get a job anywhere else. My parents wouldn't let me do it as they both worked and wouldn't have been able to come with me and felt it was too dangerous for me to do on my own. I suspect that's why they have very few takers these days. It's so pathetically underpaid, I wonder how it is even legal.

Is it really surprising?

The Daily Mail (I had to look it up) costs 70p

If he does 50 houses, that's £35.

Chat GPT says the margin for the shops is ~20%, so they're only getting £5 for this same stack of 50.

If he does this, say, 3x a week, the newsagent is literally breaking even.

It's not a great money spinner, but this is nothing new- it should be made crystal clear when someone asks about the job what the pay is though and the route so they can make an informed decision. I personally loved doing it when I was younger because I was very active so getting paid to go out on my bike was great, it also felt rewarding and when I came to compete with others for a 'regular' job i had experience that they invariably didn't. Now children are generally less active and expect more for less i can see why they're not as popular; unless newsagents start charging people a lot to cover delivery it wont change. Here the local newsagents has an adult volunteer who does it.

It's not as easy to secure work at 14 now as lot of businesses will only take people of school leaving age and above- a small local business might take him on but be sure to check everything is above board as it were.

t'was ever thus (well, at least since the early 1990s). Sunday is the worst (I could barely breathe with two bags of Sunday papers on). At least he can leave...my parents owned the newsagents so there wasn't an escape! Was something of a relief when I passed my driving test and got to the 'the country round' rather than cycling round town.

My son had a paper round in the 90s. He also had one with free papers. It was impossible to carry a bag, it was before trolleys were a thing, so I spent many weekends driving round with him. Weekend papers were massive then. It was absolutely rubbish pay then, but it did give him a bit of extra cash and encouraged him to get a supermarket job as soon as he could. He stuck at that for a long time. Some kind folk gave him money at Christmas too.