From the HUFF POST:
As we look forward to this Friday’s August unemployment snapshot from the Department of Labor, one part of the picture is already in focus: this was the worst summer on record for teens and young adults looking for work.
This July, the typical summertime peak of youth employment, the share of young people with a job was just 48.8 percent, according to fresh data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This represents the lowest July rate since the Bureau began collecting such data, in 1948. Perhaps this grim statistic explains in part why the labor force participation rate — those working or looking for work — for Americans aged 16 to 24 also fell a percentage point from the previous summer to a record low of 59.5, as more kids simply gave up looking.
“There are numbers of unpleasant consequences of this,” said Carl E. Van Horn, a labor economist at Rutgers University and one of the authors of the recent report “Unfulfilled Expectations: Recent College Graduates Struggle in a Troubled Economy.” “Increased poverty, increased reliance on social safety net programs, potential increases in illegal or off the books work, perhaps illegal actives like crime, idleness, lack of skills, atrophy of skills, inability to get a job later when the labor market gets better — the list goes on and on.”
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