Before the First Shift: A Teen First Job Checklist

By Jenna Hale · Last checked August 19, 2026

Short answer

Before a teenager’s first shift you need four things in place: the documents the employer will ask for on day one, a completed W-4, a way to get paid, and an agreement at home about what happens to the money. The documents are usually a Social Security number, photo ID, and a work permit if your state requires one. The conversation about the money is the item most families skip and the one that causes the most friction later.

Most employers ask for several things on day one, though the exact list varies from one to the next, and the family will need to have settled several others before then. These are two different lists, and most of the stress around a first job comes from doing the first list on time and the second one never.

Here is both.

The documents to have ready

Social Security number. Payroll needs the number. Most teenagers have had one since birth. If the card is lost, the Social Security Administration replaces it free, and it is worth starting that before the job offer rather than after. Note that the card is not required for Form I-9: it is one of several documents that can satisfy it, and the next bullet has the alternatives.
Photo ID or proof of age. A driver's license, a passport, a state ID card, or a birth certificate. The employer needs to establish age because what a minor may legally do depends on it.
Documents for Form I-9. Every US employer must verify identity and work authorization using Form I-9. A passport does it alone. Otherwise it is usually a driver's license plus a Social Security card or birth certificate.
A work permit, if your state requires one. This is a state rule, not a federal one, and states differ completely. See work permits for minors for how to check yours in about five minutes.
Bank account and routing numbers, if direct deposit is on offer.
An emergency contact your teenager can actually recite, plus the manager's name and the store's phone number saved in their phone.

Put the originals in an envelope the night before. A 15 year old sent to find a birth certificate twenty minutes before orientation is a recognisable kind of morning.

The W-4, which is the one they will get wrong

Form W-4 is the Employee’s Withholding Certificate. The IRS describes it as the form employees complete “so that their employer can withhold the correct federal income tax from the employee’s pay.” It is handed over on day one, usually in a stack with everything else, and a teenager will fill it in by guessing.

Two things go wrong most often.

The first is claiming exempt because somebody told them they will not owe tax. Sometimes that is correct and sometimes it is not, and the consequences of getting it wrong land in April.

The second is misreading it as a form that decides how much tax they owe. It does not. It decides how much is taken out along the way. The bill is settled later either way.

We wrote a walkthrough for exactly this, line by line, at how to fill out a W-4 for a teenager. Do it at the kitchen table in ten minutes rather than in the break room in ninety seconds.

Getting paid: direct deposit or paper check

Direct deposit is faster, cannot be lost, and does not need to be cashed. It needs an account in your teenager’s name, which for a minor generally means a joint or custodial account with an adult on it. Bank policies vary considerably on ages and account types, so ask yours.

Paper checks still exist, mostly at small employers. If that is the arrangement, work out before the first payday where the check gets deposited, because a teenager with a check and no account tends to end up at a check cashing place losing a percentage of it.

Two questions to ask the employer at orientation:

How often is payday, and on what day?
Is there a delay on the first check? Many payroll systems run a period behind, so the first check can arrive two or three weeks after the first shift. Teenagers are not expecting that and it is a much easier thing to hear in advance.

Reading the first pay stub together

The first paycheck is smaller than hours times rate, always, and the gap is bigger in percentage terms for a small check than most people assume. Sit down and read the stub once.

Line on the stub	What it means
Gross pay	Hours worked times the hourly rate. The number they were expecting.
Federal income tax	Withheld based on what the W-4 said. May be zero.
Social Security	A payroll tax. Comes out regardless of income tax withholding.
Medicare	The other half of the payroll tax pair.
State and local tax	Depends entirely on where you live. Some places, nothing.
Net pay	What actually arrives. The only number they will look at.
Year to date	Running totals, which matter in April.

Then say the useful sentence out loud: the money that came out is not gone into a hole, it is buying specific things, and one of them is their own future Social Security record.

If you want to see the arithmetic before payday, the paycheck estimator turns an hourly rate and a shift count into an expected take-home figure, which is a good way to reset expectations before the disappointment rather than after. The longer version of why the number is what it is sits at why is my teen’s paycheck so small.

Pay, hours and transport

Pay. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, effective July 24, 2009. Many states and cities set a higher one and the higher figure applies. Check what your state’s is, then check the offer against it.

One exception worth knowing before you challenge a rate. The Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet #32 says federal law allows an employer to pay “not less than $4.25 an hour to employees who are under 20 years of age during the first 90 consecutive calendar days after initial employment.” Only employees under 20 may be paid it, and it runs out after those 90 days. It is also overridden where a state or local minimum wage is higher than $4.25 and makes no exception for under-20s, which is the case in a good many states. So a low starting rate is not automatically wage theft, and the thing to check is your own state’s rule before anyone speaks to a manager.

Hours. For a 14 or 15 year old the federal caps are strict: 3 hours on a school day, 18 hours in a school week, and no work after 7 p.m. outside the summer window. At 16 the federal hour limits disappear entirely. The full table is on how many hours a 14 or 15 year old can work.

Transport. Decide before the offer is accepted, not after. Work out who is driving at closing time, what happens if a shift runs late, what happens in bad weather, and whether the answer is you at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday for the next eight months. A job that requires a parent to be a taxi is a job the whole household has taken.

The conversation about the money

This is the item that gets skipped, and it is the one that decides whether the job is a good experience.

Have it before the first paycheck arrives, because after it arrives you are negotiating over money that already feels spent. Four questions, twenty minutes.

What is this money for? Fun, a specific goal, gas, phone bill, college. Naming it changes everything, because an unnamed paycheck defaults to being spent.
Does anything change at home? If you have been paying for clothes, subscriptions or petrol, say now whether that continues. Do not quietly stop and let them discover it.
How much gets saved, and how? A percentage decided up front, ideally split off the deposit automatically, is far easier to keep than a transfer requested each payday.
Does the allowance continue? There is no right answer. There is only a decided answer and an undecided one, and the undecided one turns into an argument in about five weeks.

The teen budget worksheet is a reasonable prop for this. It is one page, it takes ten minutes, and it moves the conversation off opinions and onto numbers.

What this looks like

Marcus is 16 and starts at a hardware store in September at 12 dollars an hour, roughly 12 hours a week. He expects about 144 dollars a week.

His first check is for one week, not two, and after federal, Social Security, Medicare and state withholding it is meaningfully under what he had already spent in his head. He is annoyed for a day.

What his parents had done in advance: agreed that 20 percent goes into savings off the top and that his phone bill, 30 dollars a month, moves onto him from January. Both were said before the job started, so neither one felt like a punishment attached to earning.

What they had not done: checked the pay schedule. The store pays two weeks in arrears, so the first money arrived nineteen days after the first shift. Nobody had told Marcus that, and it was the only part he was actually upset about.

The five minute version

Documents in an envelope. W-4 done at home. Bank details ready. Pay schedule confirmed. Hour limits checked against your state. Transport agreed. One conversation about where the money goes, before the first payday.

That is the whole list.

This page is general information, not tax or legal advice, and employment and tax rules change and vary by state. Verify anything you plan to act on against the linked primary sources.

Common questions

Does my teenager need a bank account before the first day?

Not always, but it makes everything easier. Many employers offer direct deposit and some strongly prefer it, and setting that up requires an account number and a routing number. If there is no account yet, ask what the paper check alternative is, because cashing a check without an account is slow and often costs money.

Can I see my teenager's pay stub?

That is between you and your teenager rather than a legal question, and it is worth agreeing on before the first one arrives. A reasonable middle position is that you look at the first two together so they understand the deductions, then it becomes theirs.

Should the money go into savings automatically?

Splitting the deposit is easier to sustain than asking for a transfer later, because money that never lands in the spending account is never mentally spent. Many banks and payroll systems support splitting a direct deposit across two accounts. Ask yours, because policies differ.

What if the employer schedules an illegal shift?

Raise it politely with the manager first, because most of these are scheduling errors rather than bad faith. If it continues, your state labor department handles it, and their contact details are on the Department of Labor’s state labor offices list.

How old does a teenager have to be to get a Social Security number?

Most children are given one at birth. If your teenager does not have one or the card is lost, the Social Security Administration issues and replaces cards free of charge. Start early, because processing is not instant and most employers ask for the number on day one to run payroll. The card itself is one way to satisfy Form I-9, not the only way.