Youth Joblessness: No End in Sight, Says Report

An analysis by the nonprofit, nonpartisan group YoungInvincibles asks what kind of employment prospects young Americans can look forward to over the next decade. Its conclusion: Bleak.

The report, “No End in Sight? The Long-Term Youth Jobs Gap and What It Means for America,” says that though the present looks bad for young job-seekers, the future could be worse. Further, it questions whether employment for the young will ever return to what it was before the recession. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2010 expressed a similarly gloomy view.)

Study co-author Rory O’Sullivan says that today’s unemployment numbers understate the problem. The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds now stands at 16.5 percent, more than double the rate for the population at large (8.2 percent). For Latino youth, the rate is 20.5 percent, and for African-American youth, 30.2 percent.  Fewer than half of all young Americans hold any kind of job at all, says the report.

These numbers, while daunting, fail to include young people who have given up looking for work and dropped out of the labor force altogether. The report identifies what it calls a “jobs gap” of some 2.7 million, meaning that there are that many fewer jobs for youth today than would have existed without the recession. Read more >>