The Growing Crisis of Youth Unemployment…
…and How We Should Respond
by Joan Van Scyoc
“The post recession economy has little to offer young people because it can’t generate enough jobs to sustain them, and includes recent high school and college graduates.”
This was the message we received at the recent National Association of Workforce Boards Annual Conference held in Washington, DC. Furthermore, we were told, it is not just a local, state or even U.S. concern; this is a problem of global proportion. In fact, the recent uprisings in the Middle East were directly linked to “disaffected, unemployed, or underemployed young people including growing numbers of recent college graduates,” according to a recent article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek entitled, “The Youth Unemployment Bomb.”
We wondered why this was happening and what could be done about it. From a local perspective, how would this affect Brevard teens and young adults, and what would be the long range implications for area businesses?
Is It an Epidemic?
Our nation’s teenagers and many young adults ages 16-29 are working at a considerably lower rate today than at any time since the end of World War II. In 2009, there were 19,040 Brevard citizens aged 16-29 in the civilian labor force, according to Labor Market Statistics. Of those, around 5,852 (31 percent) were unemployed. We believe that percentage has increased even more since then.
Paul Harrington, Director for the Center for Labor Markets and Policy at Drexel University, explained to us that this was an epidemic over the next decade which we could not ignore. He said that the absence of work experience during the teen years and early 20s is preventing youth from acquiring marketable occupational skills, solid work habits, the soft skills demanded by employers and opportunities to interact with adults and observe the skills and behaviors needed to succeed at work. And, this absence of work experience will reduce their employment, wages and training opportunities into their mid-20s.
To make matters worse, these issues aren’t limited to young adults lacking college degrees. Harrington says, “Too many of our college graduates are left either jobless or holding jobs that do not utilize the skills and knowledge that they acquired in college.”
What Are the Contributing Factors?
- The U.S. workforce is growing older and staying employed longer.
- Almost half of NASA employees are 50 or over. Only 4 percent of NASA workers are under 30.
- Half of America’s scientists and engineers are over 40 and the average age is rising annually.
- Many young people entering the job market lack soft skills and solid work habits.
- Businesses are opting to hire older, more experienced workers and from a much smaller pool of available jobs.
Eventually the mature workers will retire. When that happens, there is likely to be a significant gap in the number of young workers aptly prepared to take the reins since they will not have had the advantages of previous generations to learn those basic work skills and gain valuable experience and knowledge in preparation for the day. Businesses will feel the pain generated from this.
How Should the Business Community Respond?
There are things we can do as a business community to alleviate this growing problem. Giving young people the opportunity to experience work and mentoring them along through internships helps build solid work habits and soft skills. Your business could set a goal for interning a certain number each year or for summer hiring.
Look to area community benefit organizations and workforce agencies for funding support. Sometimes, these organizations have grant funding available and simply need interested businesses to make it happen. The past two summers, Brevard Workforce ran a stimulus-funded program – called Emerge! – just for this purpose. Participants received two weeks of soft skills training, and then met and interviewed with participating companies (143 all tolled) who provided paid internships via the grant funding.
Some young people weren’t permanently hired, but still learned what is required to be a good employee. The program provided 358 Brevard teens and young adults with training and the opportunity to apply for a paid internship. Visit www.youtube.com/brevardworkforce to view a few of the success stories from Emerge!
By taking a few proactive steps today, we can build a better prepared workforce for Brevard’s future.
