CLEVELAND — School is out and many teens in Ohio have gotten summer jobs to stay busy, one of them being 18-year-old Marissa Otereo. She will be attending Ohio State in the fall, but for now, she is spending her summer as a camp counselor at the YMCA.

“I really enjoy staying busy during the summer," she said.

What You Need To Know

  • Gusto, a payroll company, shared research that explained the average salary for a teen in between 15 and 19 is making $14.89 an hour

  • Also, the number of teens that are working has begun to rise

  • Marissa Otereo said while it's fun teaching kids, they're also teaching her a few things, too

Her hourly wage is $14, which is above the Ohio minimum wage. She explained what her duties are as a camp counselor.

“I’m a kids camp counselor and I do cheer camp, but I see all of them all the time. So basically we have this thing it’s called play with purpose and it’s just teaching kids how to be a better person for the world and for this camp. It’s things like being responsible, being honest, teamwork," she said.

Gusto, a payroll company, shared research that explained the average salary for a teen in between 15 and 19 is making $14.89 an hour. Also, the number of teens that are working has begun to rise. For Otero, she explained that she enjoys to work.

“Working here is great on my resume, showing them I can work with kids, and I have great people skills and communicating skills and I’m just very hardworking and it shows that I’m good with my time management and all that, I feel like it definitely helps," she said.

She expressed that she is able to teach the kids, but that the job is also teaching her.

“The biggest thing I’ve learned is probably like patience, like working to be patient with the kids and then like also communicating skills because I used to be a very shy person but now I’m able to talk to other people and just get to know them easier then I would before," she said.

Otero said that many other kids her age that she knows also have jobs this summer.