Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Number of the Week: U.S. Youth Unemployment at 22.9%?
Wall Street Journal ^ | 04/08/2013 | Ben Casselman

Posted on 04/08/2013 7:42:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

22.9%: The unemployment rate for Americans under age 25, adjusting for the decline in the labor force since the start of the recession.

Perhaps no group has been hit harder by the recession and grinding recovery than the young. The official unemployment rate for those under age 25 is 16.2%, more than double the rate for the population as a whole. In percentage terms, unemployment has fallen far more slowly for young people than for the wider population.

Those figures actually understate the severity of the problem, however. The government only considers people “unemployed” if they’re actively looking for work. People who stop looking—whether they’re retired, in school, raising a family or living on friends’ couches — are instead considered “not in the labor force,” even if they would prefer to work given the opportunity.

When the recession began in December, 2007, 59.2% of the under-25 population was in the labor force, meaning they were either working or looking for work. Today, that figure has fallen to 54.5%. That may not sound like a big drop, but it makes a huge difference. If the so-called participation rate had remained unchanged, there would be 1.8 million more young people in the labor force today than there actually are. Counting those people as unemployed, rather than out of the labor force, would push the unemployment rate up to 22.9%. That’s only a hair better than the 23.9% youth unemployment rate in the euro zone, and has shown only very modest improvement during the recovery.

The decline in the participation rate among the young can’t all be attributed to the recession. Labor force participation among young people peaked at just under 70% in 1989, and has trended downward ever since, primarily due to rising rates of college attendance.

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: jobs; unemployment; youth; youthjobs
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-23 next last

1 posted on 04/08/2013 7:42:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

2 posted on 04/08/2013 7:42:49 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

RE: The official unemployment rate for those under age 25 is 16.2%, more than double the rate for the population as a whole.

Many of them college grads, I would assume.

So, how are they going to pay back their tuition loans?


3 posted on 04/08/2013 7:43:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
From Hotair:

Perhaps we should be happy that the Washington Post has finally noticed that the labor force has rapidly eroded during the so-called recovery in the Barack Obama presidency, but they still seem to have trouble with the data. Friday’s jobs report for March 2013, with its below-population-growth level of 88,000 jobs added and the exodus of 496,000 more workers from the labor force shocked everyone out of the post-election complacency, and the Post sends out a long-overdue APB:

Put out an all-points bulletin: Millions of Americans have gone missing from the workforce.

Every month that those would-be workers are gone raises the odds that they might never come back, dimming the prospects for future economic growth. …

The Labor Department reported that the U.S. labor force — everyone who has a job or is looking for one — shrank by 500,000 people in March. That brought the civilian labor force participation rate to 63.3 percent in March, its lowest level since May 1979. And it left the workforce several million members smaller than the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it should be, given the nation’s demographics.

So far, so good — except that the Post tries to sell this as a decade-long trend:

The vanishing trend is more than a decade old, but it accelerated during the Great Recession. Throughout 2012, economists held out hope that it had stopped. But then came Friday’s jobs report, and hopes were dashed.

There’s so much false information in that paragraph that even the “the” and the “but” are suspect. For the record, here is the actual decade-long trend from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is the official record-keeper of this metric:

bls-civ-pop-part-rate

 

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST...

4 posted on 04/08/2013 7:48:26 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

There are people that drop out of HS and never had a job.

There are people that graduate from HS and never had a job.

There are people that graduated college and never had a job.

None of them have ever been employed.

What database are these people in that they would be counted as unemployed when they have never been employed?


5 posted on 04/08/2013 7:57:46 AM PDT by IMR 4350
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: IMR 4350

Do part time jobs or contract jobs count?


6 posted on 04/08/2013 8:02:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

I have noticed around here that the fast food restaurants mostly have older workers now, as opposed to 20 years ago when they were all staffed with teens...........


7 posted on 04/08/2013 8:02:35 AM PDT by Red Badger (Want to be surprised? Google your own name......Want to have fun? Google your friend's names........)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: IMR 4350
There are people that graduated college and never had a job.

...and one of them is president of the US.........

8 posted on 04/08/2013 8:03:27 AM PDT by Red Badger (Want to be surprised? Google your own name......Want to have fun? Google your friend's names........)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

The solution is to raise the starting “minimum wage” rate.......that’ll solve the problem and kick start the economy! /s


9 posted on 04/08/2013 8:11:20 AM PDT by Forty-Niner (The barely bare berry bear formerly known as Ursus Arctos Horribilis.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Pay ‘em back??????

Obama is gonna “”forgive” ‘em as part of a “stimulus” package....../s


10 posted on 04/08/2013 8:13:35 AM PDT by Forty-Niner (The barely bare berry bear formerly known as Ursus Arctos Horribilis.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Forty-Niner

The GOVERNMENT is going to forgive student loans, or GRANT them, based on if you parents are registered democrats or not.

Bank on it.


11 posted on 04/08/2013 8:14:57 AM PDT by Mr. K (There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and democrat talking points.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Mr. K

Yep....sad isn’t it?


12 posted on 04/08/2013 8:16:07 AM PDT by Forty-Niner (The barely bare berry bear formerly known as Ursus Arctos Horribilis.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger
There are people that graduated college and never had a job.

...and one of them is president of the US.

Too bad the "free" press didn't look into his qualifications. Too bad so many people voted for skin color instead of character. Too bad so many people thought "Hope and Change" was a was a political proposal.

13 posted on 04/08/2013 8:18:11 AM PDT by Standing Wolf
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

I don’t know.

I don’t know how they are counting people as unemployed that have never been employed. Where are they getting the numbers?

Are they using numbers from welfare?


14 posted on 04/08/2013 8:24:08 AM PDT by IMR 4350
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Red Badger

He was too busy to have a job.

Basketball, golf. Playing with your balls is hard work.


15 posted on 04/08/2013 8:30:05 AM PDT by IMR 4350
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: IMR 4350

Who is counting businesses pushed into bankruptcy, closed restaurants ?????
Just look around, for rent, closed, signs!


16 posted on 04/08/2013 8:35:36 AM PDT by Leo Carpathian (FReeeeepisssssed)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Standing Wolf

Too bad so many Americans are ignorant......................


17 posted on 04/08/2013 9:04:15 AM PDT by Red Badger (Want to be surprised? Google your own name......Want to have fun? Google your friend's names........)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: IMR 4350

....or someone else’s.......


18 posted on 04/08/2013 9:04:57 AM PDT by Red Badger (Want to be surprised? Google your own name......Want to have fun? Google your friend's names........)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

My youth daughter is 145% employed. She is working two 29 hour per week jobs to replace the income from a 40 hour per week job which she used to have.


19 posted on 04/08/2013 9:10:14 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (Obama: Fake black man. Fake Messiah. Fake American. How many fakes can you fit in one Zer0?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Leo Carpathian

Unless something has changed, as far as I know the owner of a business that goes out of business isn’t counted in the unemployed.

You can get a number from people collecting unemployment and a number of the people that have dropped off of unemployment, but where do you get a number for people that have never been eligible for unemployment?

I guess you could get close by taking the total number of people able to work and total number of people on the tax role, but even with that you would still be missing millions of illegals.


20 posted on 04/08/2013 9:10:44 AM PDT by IMR 4350
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-23 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson