When the recession began in December, 2007, 59.2% of the under-25 population was in the labor force, meaning they were either working or looking for work. Today, that figure has fallen to 54.5%. That may not sound like a big drop, but it makes a huge difference. If the so-called participation rate had remained unchanged, there would be 1.8 million more young people in the labor force today than there actually are. Counting those people as unemployed, rather than out of the labor force, would push the unemployment rate up to 22.9%. That’s only a hair better than the 23.9% youth unemployment rate in the euro zone, and has shown only very modest improvement during the recovery.
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This is an interesting article, especially considering how shocked we all were to see the youth unemployment rate in Spain last week.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Eric. This is also very applicable because a portion of us are already entering the labor force
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ReplyDeleteWith the economy slowly growing I think that the youth employment rate will continue to increase within the next 5 years. It shocks me to think that the youth employment rate is making such a slow recovery from the recession, in 2008. I would think that companies recovering from post-recession issues would consider hiring more youths for cheaper labor expenses.
ReplyDeleteIt is crazy/frightening to think that the unemployment rate is so high for young adults our age, it just makes you wonder maybe the idea of "staying in school as long as possible" is actually something to think about more. Like Eric said, the Spain situation is something I would've never guessed to occur in such a country or any other European country for that matter (except maybe Cyprus and Greece).
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