For decades, work campers were mostly empty nesters and retirees, often in their 60s and 70s.
It’s a different story today, however.
Since the pandemic, the average age of work campers has been trending dramatically downward, with many work campers being in their 40s and sometimes in their 30s. Many have kids.
“Everybody we have had has been under 50 in the last couple of years. Almost all of them have had kids,” said Sarah Krause, who uses work campers to help her manage the 602-site Kinney Lake Campground in Marion, Wis., which offers the full spectrum of water activities, including an aqua park, as well as themed weekends.
Krause said many young families are choosing workamping as a lifestyle choice, and she’s totally fine with that because the arrangement can be mutually beneficial.
“I tell them, we have a pool and a pond. Your kids are going to have the best summer of their lives,” she explained.
Last summer, Krause’s work campers included Stephen Warner, 30, and his wife, Hailey, 33, and their four children. She hired Stephen as a cook, but later hired Hailey, too, finding her skills were useful not only for helping with children’s activities, but also for housekeeping and bartending.
“I love work camping,” Hailey said, adding that she initially learned about it through videos on YouTube and TikTok.
The Warners’ children liked spending the summer at Kinney Lake, too.
“There was a lot for them to do. Our oldest daughter got to do some housekeeping work and work in the kids’ activity area, too,” Hailey said, noting that work camping is a neat way to introduce children to the different types of jobs that can be done at a campground.
Another young work camper Krause hired to work at Kinney Lake last summer was 39-year-old Robert Jeromy Williams, who came to the park with his eight-year-old son.
Williams told Woodall’s Campground Magazine he previously earned over $100,000 a year working as an auto mechanic. But he was drawn to work camping as a lifestyle choice because he wanted to be able to spend more time with his son and homeschool him during his formative years. He also has fond memories of camping with his own parents.
“I want to have more control over his education,” Williams said. “I also want him to grow up in the world I want him to see. A lot of it for me is: How do I turn the clocks back?”
Williams also likes the safety and security that campgrounds and their guests provide to families with children.
“There is an unwritten rule: Wherever the pack of kids is, you keep an eye on them. I love the campground life. I feel like I have a community,” he said.
He also has plenty of work to do.
“I started as a maintenance person,” Williams said. “I wound up doing oddball repair jobs, and a lot of cleaning and organizing things — all the jobs they couldn’t find time to do.”
Williams said he also helped out with park security.
Across the private park industry, many park operators are not only seeing younger work camper applicants, but work campers with kids, all of whom are seeking work camper jobs as a lifestyle choice.
“While we do still have (work campers) in their 50s and 60s, it is not as prevalent as it was before COVID. We have a lot of young families, couples, and singles living and working full time with the kids being home-schooled,” said Rachel Godbout, chief operating officer of Advanced Outdoor Management, which manages 44 parks in 23 states across the country.
Blue Water Development Corp., which owns and operates 54 destination campgrounds and RV resorts in 24 states, is seeing the same phenomenon, according to Jessica Nichols, the company’s chief operating officer.
“Over the years,” she said, “we have seen a shift in who is interested in the work camper lifestyle. Our team members now range from retirees to young professionals, all seeking the opportunity to travel the United States and live a simpler, more flexible life.”
While the number of younger people interested in work camping initially increased during the pandemic, the numbers have continued to grow, Nichols said.
But while there are many younger applicants seeking work camping positions, they’re also coming into the higher with higher demands.
“Not only are people demanding a higher wage, but they are also demanding free site with free utilities and the going wage in that area,” Godbout said, adding, “Our offers vary per location and position. We are as gracious as the property budget allows us to be.”
Still, even as work campers demand more in terms of compensation, they’re still the most affordable labor source park operators can find.
“One of the challenges with this industry, depending on park dynamics, is that the ADR on RV sites alone may not support the property being able to bring in the desired amount of staff or the wage and offerings that people are demanding,” Godbout said. “Of course, this is not the case in all parks, but there are locations that simply cannot afford a higher labor budget. In those scenarios, your traditional workcampers are extremely helpful. We do still get them, but not easily as we did as pre-COVID. We are seeing a lot more people looking for work-camping that offers housing in an apartment or cabin as well.”
Pat O’Neill, of Twin Lakes Camp Resort in DeFuniak Springs, Fla., said he has observed the declining ages of people seeking employment as work Campers for many years.
“We’ve been experiencing this long before COVID,” O’Neill said, noting that even before the pandemic, he had hired a husband and wife team with four kids as work Campers.
“They worked for us, and as their kids got to be working age, they worked for us, too,” he said. “They were fantastic.”
But O’Neill also said the park operators need to be much more careful in screening younger job applicants because not all of them have the work ethic or sense of responsibility or reliability as the older generation of workampers.
“You have to screen them to find the right ones,” he said.
Godbout said there are strategies park operators can use to help with their screening of work Camper job applications.
“We like to offer performance-based incentives to help control the labor budgets and incentivize the employee,” she said. “There have been times when this structure has weeded out a handful of candidates. But overall, I believe this has given us a better pool of people to interview. You tend to get more self-motivated people who are results driven. It’s a nice balance for all.”
