Adam Longwill graduated from Goucher College with a 3.3 GPA, a clean résumé, and years of computer work experience.

He thought getting a summer job would be easy. Then he lost his job as a dog walker—before he even started.

“I interview every other week, and I can’t walk a dog,” Longwill said.

New employment numbers show this summer may be the worst for job-seeking young adults in nearly half a century.

Employment among 16-to-19-year-olds grew by just 497,000 jobs in June, according to non-seasonally adjusted data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is down 29 percent from last year’s numbers and the lowest midsummer job growth for this age group since 1951. Back then, employers added only 455,000 teens to their payrolls during the month.

Emily Linko tried looking for her first job this summer with little success. Linko, 17, has applied to a library, coffee shops, a real estate firm, and Papa John’s to do pizza delivery. But the Loch Raven, Maryland, resident said she’s not getting hired because she lacks work experience.

“It’s frustrating because how can I get the experience if they won’t give [the job] to me?” Linko said.

Linko was offered a job working the cash register at a photo print store. But the position won’t be open until August, shortly before she goes back to school.

The news isn’t much better for older teens and twentysomethings.

In a recent survey of college students, just 25 percent of those who had applied for a job before graduation had secured one. The survey, done by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, also showed those students started with a median salary of $41,000. Still, that’s an improvement over 2009, when only 19.7 percent had found jobs by the same time.

That slight uptick doesn’t mean much to Julia Mitchell, who had applied for eight jobs along the East Coast. She never heard back after several interviews.

“It just seems like [employers] aren’t hiring or want familiar faces,” Mitchell said.

The Gettysburg College sophomore then found an announcement on Facebook looking for employees to run a SnoBros snowball stand in Timonium, Maryland.

The woman behind the snowball stand was also out of work.

Lindsey Citron dug out her grandparents’ old snowball machine and opened a stand. SnoBros has nine employees, most of whom are former high-school friends of Citron’s.

During its busiest hours, between 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., SnoBros sells about 30 snowballs an hour.

While Citron wouldn’t disclose how much it costs to keep the stand running, she said she was surprised how expensive it was to pay for salaries and flavored syrup each week.

But so far, Citron’s stand has been seeing huge crowds during weekday afternoons and the weekends, thanks to the recent heatwave. The snowballs cost anywhere from $1.25 for a kiddie size of pimp juice to $2.50 for a 20-ounce Hawaiian egg custard with marshmallow on top. Pet dogs get complimentary cups of ice.

Citron had applied for a handful of jobs and unpaid internships this summer, but was turned down by all of them. The Tufts University junior had worked for the past seven summers, and needed a way to make money or gain résumé-worthy experience. Many of the places she applied for work either didn’t have open internships anymore or considered her too qualified for the job.

“I was surprised,” Citron said. “I didn’t think you can be too overqualified for free labor.”

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Rachel Bernstein is an editorial researcher at the Baltimore Business Journal.