Junior Achievement helps kids learn business

If you think the average teen's activities are preparing him or her mainly for a career in music listening, cell-phone talking or video-game playing, think again.

According to a recent poll, teens really are thinking about what they want for a career later in life.

And most of them want to go into business.

For the third straight year, teens selected a career in business as their ideal job, according to the JA (Junior Achievement) Worldwide "Interprise Poll."

"Business" occupations received 9.7 percent of the responses, while "doctor" and "teacher" each received 6.2 percent and "entertainer" received 5.7 percent, JA said in a recent press release.

Owning a business appeals to more than two-thirds of students (68.4 percent), and boys were more inclined to be entrepreneurs (74.1 percent) than girls (62.9 percent).

Among ethnic groups, black students showed a greater preference for owning their own business (79.1 percent), and white students showed the lowest preference (63.5 percent).

The poll found that, in many cases, occupational choices and earnings expectations are driven by gender. For example, 9.4 percent of girls said becoming some type of doctor is their ideal career, while only 1.9 percent of boys said the same. Females also expressed a greater interest than males in becoming teachers and lawyers.

JA said 1,065 students between the ages of 13 and 18 from 80 JA locations across the country participated in the poll, administered in October and November last year.

So now we know many young people are interested in business careers. But how can they learn about entrepreneurship while they're still young?

Well, that's where you come in.

Junior Achievement of Utah expects to send local business people out to educate and inspire more than 50,000 students in 2,200 classrooms across the state this school year. The national JA organization has more than 140 offices that reach 4 million students, and another 2 million students are served by operations in 97 countries worldwide.

Erin Bodily of Utah's JA program says the organization works with children in kindergarten through 12th grade, and its volunteers teach a grade-based curriculum about business and economics.