From Bob Herbert in the New York Times
For those concerned with the economic viability of the American family going forward, the plight of young workers, especially young men, is particularly frightening. The percentage of young American men who are actually working is the lowest it has been in the 61 years of record-keeping, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.
Only 65 of every 100 men aged 20 through 24 years old were working on any given day in the first six months of this year. In the age group 25 through 34 years old, traditionally a prime age range for getting married and starting a family, just 81 of 100 men were employed.
For male teenagers, the numbers were disastrous: only 28 of every 100 males were employed in the 16- through 19-year-old age group. For minority teenagers, forget about it. The numbers are beyond scary; they’re catastrophic.
This should be the biggest story in the United States. When joblessness reaches these kinds of extremes, it doesn’t just damage individual families; it corrodes entire communities, fosters a sense of hopelessness and leads to disorder.
The unemployment that has wrought such devastation in black communities for decades is now being experienced by a much wider swath of the population. We’ve been in deep denial about this. Way back in March 2007, when the official unemployment rate was a wildly deceptive 4.5 percent and the Bush crowd was crowing about the alleged strength of the economy, I wrote:
“People can howl all they want about how well the economy is doing. The simple truth is that millions of ordinary American workers are in an employment bind. Steady jobs with good benefits are going the way of Ozzie and Harriet. Young workers, especially, are hurting, which diminishes the prospects for the American family. And blacks, particularly black males, are in a deep danger zone.”
The official jobless rate is now more than twice as high — 9.4 percent — and even more wildly deceptive. It ticked down by 0.1 percent last month not because more people found jobs, but because 450,000 people withdrew from the labor market. They stopped looking, so they weren’t counted as unemployed.
A truer picture of the employment crisis emerges when you combine the number of people who are officially counted as jobless with those who are working part time because they can’t find full-time work and those in the so-called labor market reserve — people who are not actively looking for work (because they have become discouraged, for example) but would take a job if one became available.
The tally from those three categories is a mind-boggling 30 million Americans — 19 percent of the overall work force.
This is, by far, the nation’s biggest problem and should be its No. 1 priority.
A few curiosities pop up in my head after a very quick read of this:
1. The baby boom generation hasn’t fully vacated the job market into retirement just yet. That means they’re taking up a ton of jobs, keeping Gens X and Y in the jobs that 20-24 yr olds might “normally” have had access to.
2. I know this article wasn’t meant to be exhaustive, but I when he says, “For male teenagers, the numbers were disastrous: only 28 of every 100 males were employed in the 16- through 19-year-old age group,” I wonder how many of them are actively seeking employment. Is it possible that increases in prosperity/standards of living have reduced the need for many of these teenagers to find work?
3. “In the age group 25 through 34 years old, traditionally a prime age range for getting married and starting a family, just 81 of 100 men were employed.” I wonder if he’s taking into account the demographic data that people are marrying and starting families later on average than they used to.
My questions/observations might seem to have a bias to them, as though I don’t think things are as bad as this guy is describing. I’m actually ambivalent about that – like I said, the article just stimulated a few questions on my first read.
I think we should be very grateful that we are in Canada, where we were protected from taking the full brunt of this, and we see ourselves coming out if it already.