A record number of teenagers are unable to find jobs, with 2011 employment rates for ages 16 to 19 reaching the lowest numbers since the World War II era.
Only 26 percent of teenagers were employed in 2011, a 45 percent drop from rates in 2000, according to a recent study by the Brookings Institute.
The study, “The Plummeting Labor Market Fortunes of Teens and Young Adults,” used data from the U.S. Department of Labor to examine the employment rate of teenagers and young adults from the largest 100 metropolitan areas.
California was home to all five of the worst cities for U.S. teen employment in 2011. The Los Angeles metropolitan area was at the bottom of the list with a 16.9 percent employment rate for 16 to 19 year olds.
Though the Ogden-Clearfield area of Utah had the highest employment rates for teenagers in this age range in 2011, employment rates were still only 43.2 percent.
Young adults from 20 to 24 years old also saw an employment decrease over the past decade, moving from a 72 percent employment rate in 2000 to a 61 percent employment rate in 2011.
Higher education was “strongly associated with employment” of 20 to 24 year olds, especially for those with an associate or bachelor’s degree. Young adults who never graduated from high school were more likely to be unemployed than high school graduates.
“If this were any other group, you would call it a Great Depression,” said Andrew Sum, professor of economics at Northeastern University and co-author of the Brookings study, to The Boston Globe.
Jobs that traditionally went to teenagers in the past are now sometimes going to older people looking for work. It can be difficult for teenagers and young adults to compete with workers with years of experience.
Though the report uses data from 2010-2011, Brookings also created an interactive tool that examines the same factors using more recent data from 2012. The tool covers employment data for teenagers and young adults in the largest 100 metropolitan areas in the U.S.
