NEW YORK — When Theodor Gervais was 14, he took a summer job selling cell phone covers in Brooklyn for $100 a month, sitting at a table outside a store in what he describes as "somewhat of a bad area."

Now 16, Theodor hoped this summer would be safer and more profitable. He applied for a summer job through a city-sponsored neighborhood program and found he was one of 3,200 applicants — for fewer than 1,200 jobs.

Across the country, poor teens face similarly long odds.

As summer arrives, the job market for teens is suffering along with the rest of the economy. And those jobs will be harder to find this year for the poorer kids who need them the most as laid-off adults compete for work at the lowest rung.

"Summer is a time when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," said Ron Fairchild, executive director of the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University.

Higher-income teens are more likely to have the family and school connections that help them land summer jobs — as counselors at the camps they attend, lifeguards at the pools where they swim and clerks at the stores where they shop.

Last summer, half of teens whose families earned $75,000 to $100,000 worked, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Fewer than a third of teens from families making less than $20,000 had work.

The overall teen unemployment rate jumped from 15.4 percent in April to 18.7 percent in May. Roughly 200,000 teens, an unusually high monthly number, started looking for work. The unemployment number is based on how many teens are actively — and unsuccessfully — seeking jobs.

Because early work experience makes it easier to get a job as a grownup, the tougher summer job market for teens hobbles them as they get older.

Teen employment is down sharply since 2000, when the economy peaked and a federal summer jobs program ended. The rate of teens who had jobs last year was the lowest in more than half a century, Sum said.

Jobs that once went to teens now go to more qualified older or immigrant workers, he said. And some big-box stores have raised the minimum age of applicants they will consider.

Teen clients of Covenant House, a youth social services agency in New York, are competing for fast-food jobs against people who've been to college.

"It's a buyer's market," said Bruce Henry, the agency's director. "People are demanding higher levels."

When Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee talks about his city's summer jobs program, he recalls a TV reporter asking a boy he had interviewed about a summer job whether his family would watch the newscast. The boy said no — he was homeless.

"For some of the kids, it's a pretty fragile existence," Barrett said. "Anything we can do to break out of a cycle of poverty or hopelessness is something I'm very interested in doing."