Stimlus Fails Nation's Young Workers

Over the last few months the Associated Press has published a number of stories critical of various aspects of President Obama's stimulus package. Today, they address the lack of teen jobs created by the bill, despite Administration claims:

More than $1.2 billion in federal stimulus money was supposed to help teenagers find jobs this summer, but the effort barely made a dent in one of the bleakest job markets young workers have faced in more than 60 years.

Despite the program's admirable goals, experts and government watchdogs say it yielded few new opportunities for teens seeking work, as more and more adults are vying for the same low-wage positions at hamburger stands and community pools. ...

Now, as congressional investigators scrutinize the program for potential waste, experts are wondering why it couldn't prevent youth unemployment rates from soaring to 18.5 percent in July, the highest rate measured among 16- to 24-year-olds in that month since just after World War II.

"The summer program was basically half-disaster," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. "It was too little, too late and too poorly constructed to have any lasting effect on our youngest workers."

Expanding on those unemployment figures, the New York Times reported at the beginning of the month:

This August, the teenage unemployment rate — that is, the percentage of teenagers who wanted a job who could not find one — was 25.5 percent, its highest level since the government began keeping track of such statistics in 1948. Likewise, the percentage of teenagers over all who were working was at its lowest level in recorded history.

“There are an amazing number of kids out there looking for work,” said Andrew M. Sum, an economics professor at Northeastern University. “And given that unemployment is a lagging indicator, and young people’s unemployment even lags behind the rest of unemployment, we’re going to see a lot of kids of out work for a long, long, long, long time.”