August 31, 2011 12:16 PM EDT
Unemployment in the U.S. has been stubbornly high and presents the largest single obstacle to the re-election hopes of Barack Obama. But joblessness among Americans who cannot yet vote – teenagers – are at levels that are both staggering and unprecedented.
According to data from Employment Policies Institute (EPI), a non-profit research organization, joblessness among teens stayed above 20 percent in 35 states through the summer of 2011.
The teen jobless rate is two to three times worse than the national average.
Seven states and the District of Columbia are still averaging teen unemployment at a level exceeding 30 percent.
In the nation’s capital, almost one-half of people (49.3 percent) between the ages of 16 and 19 are jobless this summer.
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On the whole, according to EPI, exactly one-quarter (25.0 percent) of the nation’s teenagers were out of work in July 2011.
Over the past five years, this figure has spiked in tandem with the recession that has paralyzed parts of the national economy.
In July 2006, the teen jobless figure stood at 15.5 percent.
"The nation’s teens have just experienced their third summer in a row with an unemployment rate above 20 percent,” said Michael Saltsman, research fellow at the EPI.
“As a result, thousands have missed out on the valuable career experience that comes from an entry-level job.”
According to EPI, the five states with the highest unemployment among teenagers comprised Nevada (34.9 percent); California (34.1 percent); North Carolina (33.7 percent); Washington state (33.0 percent); and Missouri (31.9 percent).
Perhaps not coincidentally, Nevada and California have both suffered mightily from a collapse in the housing market and the crippling of the construction industry. This has likely damaged the local retail industries, which tend to hire a lot of teenagers, especially over the summer.
“Joblessness among teens is at unprecedented levels,” said Stephen Bronars, a senior labor economist at Welch Consulting in Washington D.C.
“Many economists use the employment-to-population ratio, rather than the unemployment rate, to measure the jobs situation for teens. The jobless crisis for teens is [actually] understated by the unemployment rate -- this is because discouraged workers, and others who are not looking for work because they don't think they will receive a job offer, are not counted as unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today only about one in four teens have a job.”
Bronars finds the data extremely troubling.
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