Unemployment Rate for Young Americans at Post-World War II High
September 27th, 2009Update: The New York Post Likely Has Made a Mistake About the Percentage of Unemployed Young People
Until Richard Wilner, the author of the New York Post piece below, can come up with a source of his information, I think we have to conclude that his 52.2% number is nonsense, at least from an official standpoint.
As far as I can tell, the official youth unemployment rate is 18.5%:
Unemployment
In July 2009, 4.4 million youth were unemployed, up by nearly 1.0 million from July 2008. The youth unemployment rate was 18.5 percent in July 2009, the highest July rate on record for the series, which began in 1948.
Source: U.S. Department of Labor: Employment and Unemployment Among Youth Summary
—End Update—
Warning: Government numbers ahead.
Via: New York Post:
The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. — meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.
And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults — aged 16 to 24, excluding students — getting a job and moving out of their parents’ houses are long. Young workers have been among the hardest hit during the current recession — in which a total of 9.5 million jobs have been lost.
“It’s an extremely dire situation in the short run,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. “This group won’t do as well as their parents unless the jobs situation changes.”
Al Angrisani, the former assistant Labor Department secretary under President Reagan, doesn’t see a turnaround in the jobs picture for entry-level workers and places the blame squarely on the Obama administration and the construction of its stimulus bill.
“There is no assistance provided for the development of job growth through small businesses, which create 70 percent of the jobs in the country,” Angrisani said in an interview last week. “All those [unemployed young people] should be getting hired by small businesses.”
There are six million small businesses in the country, those that employ less than 100 people, and a jobs stimulus bill should include tax credits to give incentives to those businesses to hire people, the former Labor official said.
“If each of the businesses hired just one person, we would go a long way in growing ourselves back to where we were before the recession,” Angrisani noted.
During previous recessions, in the early ’80s, early ’90s and after Sept. 11, 2001, unemployment among 16-to-24 year olds never went above 50 percent. Except after 9/11, jobs growth followed within two years.
Wow 52.2 percent is a “real explosion” over 50 percent. What the article doesn’t say is that it is LUDICROUS for parents to pay a gazillion dollars for the child to go college when there is payback on that investment.
My nephew worked at a job as an technical writer for a start up company this summer. Unfortunately, things went south for the company.
Guess who didn’t get paid a dime?
If I had children and really didn’t want them to live off my largess well into their adulthood, I’d be sending them to a trade school.
Plumbing, heating, solar energy – something people need all the time. Something you can do without anyone else controlling you (for the most part).
But go to school to college so that you can go work for the paper shufflers of the world?
Phht.
For that matter, I’ve seen some that there is a lot of short term work available in the U.S. if you now how to weatherize a home. BILLIONS of dollars for weatherizing low-income homes. That’s a job? Isn’t it? Better than a flippin burger job if you can get one.
And Mr.Al Angrisani, former assistant Labor Department secretary under President Reagan, who doesn’t see a turnaround in the jobs picture for entry-level workers and places the blame squarely on the Obama administration and the construction of its stimulus bill, needs to get his head out of his ass.
Let us look at your record at creating jobs real jobs, rather than being so busy busting unions, shipping jobs overseas, and working your darnest to make every freaking government job into something “contractors” could do better.
SHAME ON YOU for opening your mouth.
meant to say NO payback
I’m wondering if the New York Post isn’t much more reliable than the Daily Mail. Pretty sure this figure isn’t accurate; probably someone misinterpreted a spreadsheet somewhere.
High as the *real* percentage may be, the gov’t number can’t have jumped anywhere near that level.
@Cloud
The NY Post is pretty bad, it’s true.
I’m not able to confirm the NY Post number with anything the U.S. Department of Labor has reported.
As far as I can tell, here’s the latest from them:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/youth.nr0.htm
Unemployment
In July 2009, 4.4 million youth were unemployed, up by nearly 1.0 million from July 2008. The youth unemployment rate was 18.5 percent in July 2009, the highest July rate on record for the series, which began in 1948.