“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.
Recessions disproportionately hurt America’s youngest and most inexperienced workers, who are often the first to be laid off and the last to be rehired. Jobs for youth also never recovered after the last recession, in 2001.
But this August found more than a quarter of the teenagers in the job market unable to find work, an unemployment rate nearly three times that of the nonteenage population (9 percent), and nearly four times that of workers over 55 (6.8 percent, also a record high for that age group). An estimated 1.64 million people ages 16-19 were unemployed.
Many companies that rely on seasonal business, like leisure and hospitality, held the line and hired fewer workers this summer – a particular problem for teenagers.
In Miami, 18-year-old Rony Bonilla spent past summers busing tables at restaurants and working at the Miami Seaquarium. He said he set out to find another job this summer, but dozens of businesses, like Walgreens, Kmart and Chuck-E-Cheese, turned him down. Mr. Bonilla said he and many of his friends were unable to find any job offers beyond commission-only employment scams.
Read more here: Teenage Jobless Rate Reaches Record High