Finance jobs you can get at 16 (and at 18)

Here's the straight answer rather than a page of encouragement. Finance hires very little at 16, so the work genuinely open to you right now sits outside this industry and gets found locally rather than through a jobs site. Worth saying plainly before you read on: FIRSTJOBZ lists roles for over-18s, so treat this page as the map for arriving at 18 ready instead of a shortcut into the board a year early.

Why 16 is a quiet year in this industry

It isn't about capability. It's about what entry-level finance work involves. From your first week you'd be handling supplier bank details, payroll figures and information about which customers are struggling. Most junior roles are full-time and most come bundled with a qualification the employer is paying for, so they're recruiting somebody who has finished with school rather than somebody fitting shifts around year 11.

That said, don't let anyone tell you the door is bolted. Apprenticeships in England are open from 16. Accounting apprenticeships at the entry level do get filled by 16-year-olds where an employer is willing, most often in small firms and local practices where the person deciding is the owner rather than a recruitment system. The majority of finance apprenticeship vacancies you'll see advertised are still pitched at people leaving college or sixth form. Knowing that in advance saves you a lot of demoralising rejection emails.

What's genuinely open at 16 and 17 - and where to find it

None of it comes through us, so here's where it does come from.

Apprenticeship vacancies at level 2 are listed on the government's apprenticeship service and on the websites of local accountancy practices. Ring the small firms in your town. The ones with four staff and a shopfront rarely advertise anywhere a search engine will find them, so they end up hiring whoever asked.

A Saturday job that touches money is the other half of the plan and it gets found the old way: walking in with a printed CV, asking whether the manager's about, reading the card in the shop window. Retail, hospitality, a market stall, a garden centre. Anywhere you cash up, count a float or check a till against the day's takings. That's not filler experience. It's the closest thing to a reconciliation you can do at sixteen and it hands you a real story for every interview question about accuracy.

School routes matter more than people your age assume. Your careers lead has contacts, the college has employer links and the larger accountancy firms run insight and work experience days aimed at sixth formers, advertised on their own early careers pages. Ask. They're short, free and worth more as evidence of interest than any sentence you could write about being passionate.

Become the treasurer of something while you're at it. A club, a team, a school society, a charity week. Collecting subs, keeping records and reporting a balance that actually balances is exactly the shape of the job. It also puts a line on your CV that almost nobody your age has.

And take the course that feeds the sector. A T Level in Accounting exists and starts after GCSEs, with assistant accountant as its specialism. So does a T Level in Finance. Colleges also run AAT Level 2, the recognised first rung of the accounting ladder. A business BTEC or A-levels in maths, business or economics all keep the door wide too. Our no-experience guide covers how all of that gets turned into an application that lands.

The hours rules while you're still at school

If you're 16 but still in year 11, you count as a child worker in law and the rules are tight. Worth knowing plainly, because they shape what any Saturday job can offer you.

You can't work during school hours at all. You can't work before 7am or after 7pm either. In term time the total is capped at 12 hours a week: up to 2 hours on a school day, up to 2 hours on a Sunday and up to 8 hours on a Saturday at 15 or 16. In the school holidays that rises to a maximum of 35 hours a week at 15 or 16, with Sundays still capped at 2 hours. You're entitled to an hour's break after 4 hours of work. The law also guarantees you a 2-week stretch of the holidays completely free of work each year. Some councils require your employer to hold a work permit for you, so don't be thrown if that gets mentioned.

Once you're past school leaving age, broadly the end of year 11, you become a young worker instead. You can work up to 40 hours a week and take a full-time job, though in England you stay in some form of part-time education or training until you turn 18. Your legal minimum at 16 and 17 is £8.00 an hour, or £8.00 if you're an apprentice. Our finance pay guide sets out the whole ladder.

What unlocks at 18 - and where FIRSTJOBZ comes in

Three things change at once. None of them requires you to have done anything except have a birthday.

The money moves first. Your legal minimum rises to £10.85 an hour automatically the day you turn 18, whatever job you're in. Same desk, same work, higher floor.

The vacancies appear second. School-leaver programmes, higher apprenticeships and junior finance roles are overwhelmingly written for people who have finished level 3 study, which puts them at 18. Some employers in financial services also set their own minimum age for roles involving client money or regulated work, so a few adverts that said no at 16 quietly stop saying it.

Which is where we come in. FIRSTJOBZ lists roles for over-18s, so the board isn't somewhere you can use yet. From the day you turn 18 it is. Everything on it is a job you're already old enough to hold, with nobody having to make an exception for your age. Put the date in your phone. From your eighteenth birthday you can browse live finance jobs and start applying the same week.

Arrive at 18 ready

The third change is how you're read. That one you control. The two years before it are how you do it.

An 18-year-old who spent those years cashing up on Saturdays, keeping a club's accounts and finishing a T Level is not an unknown quantity. They're the safest hire in the pile: evidence of accuracy, evidence of trust and a referee who'll pick up the phone. Stack three things and you walk into your eighteenth with all of them.

Experience that touches money, however humble. Six months on a till beats a blank page every time.

References that are ready to go. Ask a manager before you leave whether they'd be happy to be named and take a mobile number rather than a shop landline nobody answers.

Availability you can state clearly. Employers hiring school leavers want to know when you can start and how many hours you can do. Knowing your own answer makes you easy to say yes to.

Two practical extras for the run-up. Start learning to drive at 17 if you can, because practice work often means travelling out to client premises and a licence widens where you can apply. And get your National Insurance number somewhere you can find it, since employers ask for it when you start rather than when you apply. Learn spreadsheets properly too, on your own, for free. It's a tiny investment that turns one interview question from a wobble into a strength.

So no, this isn't a category where you fill in a form at 16 and start next Saturday. It's one where the door opens a little later and then opens properly, into a career with paid qualifications behind it. Start where the door is actually open now: the local practice, the Saturday job, the T Level, the club accounts nobody else wanted to keep. Head back to the finance hub for the CV and interview guides while you're building. The board will be waiting on your eighteenth.