Jobless rate for young workers in US highest since 1948

[Hannah Bell]

This year’s graduates, from both high school and college, face a “dire labor market” with no safety net, a briefing paper released Wednesday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) warned. The report by the think tank notes that the unemployment rate in 2010 for young workers age 16-24 is the worst since this data has been tracked in 1948.

The report is a devastating refutation of the Obama administration’s talk of an “economic recovery.” Since 2007, unemployment rates for young people ages 16-24 not attending school roughly doubled. Compared to the official overall unemployment rate of 9.6 percent in 2010, the rate for that age group is roughly double, at 18.4 percent.

While high school graduates have been hardest hit, the unemployment rate for young college graduates is more than double the rate of college graduates 25 and older.

Additionally, over half of all college graduates from both public and private schools are burdened with at least $20,000 of debt. These are from 2009 figures. In the summer of 2010 the total debt from student loans overtook that of credit card debt for the first time in the US. Tuition has been rising drastically over the last two years, so the average student debt today is significantly higher.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/yout-a22.shtml

[AdHocSolver]

1. What do they expect when 75 percent of what we buy is made elsewhere and imported.

We might as well be a nation of buggy whip manufacturers. There are few jobs left that provide enough income for a person to pay the usual bills let alone pay off education debt.

Any economy depends on demand in order to drive it (not on supply), and demand depends on buyers having income (jobs) to be able to purchase anything.

The U.S. economy will not recover until a majority of the goods that we buy are manufactured in the U.S. by American labor. To achieve that goal, it is necessary to take the profit out of outsourcing jobs to low wage countries. This requires getting rid of NAFTA and its ilk, changing the tax code that makes it profitable to outsource jobs, and putting import duties on goods outsourced to low wage countries, so that companies which want to employ American labor can make a profit by doing so.

This is Economics 101, and those of us who understand basic economic reality are just pissing in the wind trying to get people to understand this.

Stimulus money won't work long term as long as corporations can maximize profit by outsourcing to low wage countries. The corporations merely use that money to build factories in China and India.

Also, ignore GDP and the stock market. They have nothing to do with the average person's economic situation. The key to the proper functioning of any economy is the level of jobs and income of the general population. A strong economy depends on a strong middle class, and the U.S. middle class is shrinking.

[JDPriestly]

2. One young woman paid off her student debt by living with her parents

after finishing college and while working at her first jobs. Parents and children are going to have to look at living together as a good alternative to years of paying debts on low incomes.

It is not the American way of life, but it is preferable to the heavy burdens of debt. Children are best off living with their parents while their parents are still young and possibly working. It becomes much more difficult to live with your parents as they age.

[Starry Messenger]

3. recommend.

[xchrom]

4. +1