The Devastated Teen Job Market
Jul. 31st, 2013 04:04 pmNeil Sullivan lays it out for us:
This situation has been evolving since the 2001 dot bomb, due to a combination of completely inadequate education (where most of our kids might learn the three Rs, but don't learn a trade, or how to balance a checkbook) and people with more qualifications pushing down into the lower tier job markets. The days when people with masters degrees work at call centers because there's no work in their field haven't gone away.
There are fears that this could spark an Arab Spring-style uprising in America. I think we're already seeing this manifest in increased gang crime.
Hold on to your hats, kids.
In this labor market you have college students pressing down into a labor market that used to be for high school grads. You have high school grads pressing down into a labor market that used to be for teenagers and dropouts. In that push down effect, teenagers are out of the equation and drop-outs have hell to pay economically going forward. So that's the American economy and that's why youth employment, the employment of 16- to 19- year-olds, has fallen off the table and quite frankly out of the conversation.
This situation has been evolving since the 2001 dot bomb, due to a combination of completely inadequate education (where most of our kids might learn the three Rs, but don't learn a trade, or how to balance a checkbook) and people with more qualifications pushing down into the lower tier job markets. The days when people with masters degrees work at call centers because there's no work in their field haven't gone away.
There are fears that this could spark an Arab Spring-style uprising in America. I think we're already seeing this manifest in increased gang crime.
Hold on to your hats, kids.