Unemployment for the young at 52.2% – a new post World War II high

The bracket that defines the “young” and their current unemployment level is the ages of 16-24. 52.2% of those in that age bracket are now unemployed, which is a brand new high since the end of the World War II, according to the New York Post. This means that millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time. Labor Deptartment statistics also show that the number of chronically unemployed — those without a job for 27 weeks or more — has also hit a post-WWII high.

“There is no assistance provided for the development of job growth through small businesses, which create 70 percent of the jobs in the country,” Angrisani said in an interview last week. “All those [unemployed young people] should be getting hired by small businesses.”

There are six million small businesses in the country, those that employ less than 100 people, and a jobs stimulus bill should include tax credits to give incentives to those businesses to hire people, the former Labor official said.

“If each of the businesses hired just one person, we would go a long way in growing ourselves back to where we were before the recession,” Angrisani noted.

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September 27, 2009 · Filed Under General Politics


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