Better jobs reports don't help this lost generation of unemployed young adults

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/03/jobs-reports-lost-generation-young-unemployment


The US jobs market is improving, but the situation remains grim for school and college leavers. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

President Obama can take some comfort at the latest unemployment statistics. Economic number-cruncher types expected things to be same in April as in March, but the 7.5% unemployment rate announced Friday is a tad better than forecasted. In fact, the unemployment rate has been heading down steadily since it topped 10% in October 2009. In all, 165,000 jobs were added in April, and February and March saw an upward revision of 114,000 of past published totals. No, we're not back in happy-go-lucky days, but there's certainly a case to be made that things are headed in the right direction.

But there are two glaring problems with this view of things: some Americans are so dejected that they are simply dropping out of the job search (and thus disappear from the statistics), as Guardian economics guru Heidi Moore pointed out last month. It's not exactly an economic victory when job-seekers are giving up.

Equally problematic is the persistently high unemployment rate for young people. For many subsets of the population, there's been a marked improvement from a year ago, but not for African Americans; nor for the young. The figures for the 20-24 age group have been especially dispiriting. The seasonally adjust unemployment rate for these young people is currently 13.1%, almost the same as last April. Consider that that is a worse unemployment rate than for those without high school diplomas (11.6%), and that the effective youth unemployment rate, which is adjusted for those who have given up looking for work, is several percentage points higher still. And combining those two subsets, more than one in five (20.4%) of 18-29-year-old African Americans is without a job.

One church on Long Island, near New York, has gone as far as to recommend that its attendees refrain from asking young people "what do you do?" Instead, as a recent church bulletin advised (pdf), it's better to ask the more generic "So, tell me about yourself." You know we've reached a tipping-point when you can't ask even twentysomethings about their work.