US And European Teen Unemployment Remain Appallingly High (But US Has Far Lower Participation)

Confounded Interest ^ | 10/31/2013 | Anthony B. Sanders

[flyingtabby]

According to OECD, teen unemployment rates (under 25) in Europe continue to escalate, particularly in Greece and Spain.

eurounemploy

That is scary looking! It reminds me of The Who’s song “Teenage Wasteland.”

But, the US is no slouch when it comes to teen unemployment. The 16-19 cohort is seeing an unemployment rate of 22.60% while to 20-24 cohort is experiencing 12.80% unemployment. For the sake of comparison, I also included Germany teenage (under 25) unemployment which is 7.70%.

unemployteenusgerm

For the entire population, here is a chart of labor force participation in Germany, Spain, USA and Mexico.

lfp103113

Even beleaguered Spain has a higher and growing labor force participation than the US and Mexico.

High under 25 unemployment in the US is putting downward pressure on the real median household income.

household-income-monthly-median-since-2000

Today, the Bloomberg consumer confidence index fell to -37.6. For all the cries of “It was the government shutdown!”, bear in mind that consumer confidence has not been above 0 since 2000. It’s a trend, not a 2 week event.

bloomccslick

[flyingtabby]

With the US and Mexico competing for world's lowest labor force participation rate, WHY are we thinking of letting in millions more low wage Mexicans?

[humblegunner]

here is a chart

Where?

[Vigilanteman]

We helped out three daughters with the first year tuition and books. After that, the help was limited to a small amount of spending money and a ticket home for the holidays. Once they were borrowing the money and footing the bills, it was amazing how frugal they all became. One decided she could earn quite a few of the general requirement credits at the local community college and then transfer them. Another decided she could get just as good of an education at a low cost college in Idaho. Our third decided both of the above and leaned which scholarships she could actually get. Hint: the big amount ones attract a lot of competition. The $1000 and $500 ones do not.

In fact, the local scholarship committee for one of the $1000 per year awards asked her if she had made an error in listing her college tuition as $4000 rather then $40,000. They were impressed that she had the sense to research and attend in a distant state where tuition was about 1/10th the price of a local Carnegie-Mellon or Duquense University.