PRESS RELEASE
Nation's Youth Facing Depression-Era Unemployment Rates
July 15, 2008 (EIRNS)—The national jobless rate for U.S. youth is the highest in six decades, according to a report by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies. Fifty-one percent of the nation's teens were employed in 2000, a mere 37% of teens are employed (about one in three) when the study was made in April, and probably less today. According to them, the teen employment rate has been deteriorating for over a year, since the fall of 2006, and today, an additional two million teens are unemployed. Youth today are fighting with immigrants and lay-off victims for the same entry-level jobs. Quoting the report, "Low income blacks, hispanic teens face the equivalent of a Great Depression." The metropolitan area with the highest unemployment rate is Washington, D.C., with 86% unemployed youth, but Chicago, Detroit and New York were all above 80%.
What the report noted, that coverage in today's Washington Post overlooked, is that the entire job market had shrunk by 30% since the beginning of the year.