Young, Black, and Unemployed

America’s teenagers and young adults should save themselves the trouble of looking for a job, because chances are that they won’t find one. At least, that’s the unfortunate picture painted by Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum in a recent report on the dire employment situation of the nation’s teens and young adults. According to Sum, the job market for the youngest workers has all but collapsed; at the end of 2009, the employment-to-population rate for teens stood at 26 percent. That’s 7.5 percentage points lower than it was at the start of the 2007 recession and more than 19 percentage points below where it was in 2000. Put more concretely, if not for the recession, 3.26 million more teens would be making their way through the workforce.

The impact of a depressed teen and young adult labor market is hard to understate. Without a wide number and variety of work opportunities, teens don’t gain necessary workplace experience. This distinct lack of work exposure harms their immediate and longer-term job prospects and earnings in severe and lasting ways.

But this is far from the worst of the news.

For teens and young adults of color, and especially black males, the employment picture is bleak to the point of absurdity. As Sum notes in his report, the employment rate for black teens is a dismal 14.1 percent. For young black males, it’s an even lower 13 percent. By contrast, the employment rate for white teenagers is a solid, if lackluster, 29.4 percent.

Depressingly, these findings are basically par for the course. It’s neither noteworthy nor novel to observe that black teens, particularly males, are disproportionately affected by ebb and flow of economic growth and contraction. In a 2004 study commissioned by Northwestern University, researchers analyzed employment rates among black male teens (aged 16-19) and black male young adults (aged 20-24) over a fifty year time period. They found that rates of black male teen and young adult employment were “quite cyclically sensitive,” with employment rising at a steady average pace during periods of national job growth and falling at an above average rate during periods of economic recession. During the 1981-1982 recession, for instance, employment among 16-19 year old black men fell to 24.6 percent down from 28.5 percent in 1978.

Likewise, the recession of the early aughts saw a similar drop, with employment falling from 25.6 percent in 2002 to a dismal 19.9 percent in 2003. Moreover, there are massive gaps between the employment rates of black and white teen men: 26.7 percent in 1981 and 19.5 percent in 2003. And while the employment rate for black men in the 20 to 24 age cohort is higher and more stable (an average of about 57 percent), the employment gap between those black men and their white counterparts is just as large: 19.7 percent in 1981 and 18.8 percent in 2003.

Furthermore, little of this takes the astoundingly high black incarceration rates into account. According to a 2006 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, “While African American men represent 14 percent of the population of young men in the [United States], they represent over 40 percent of the prison population.” On the whole, 10.1 percent of African American men aged 18-29 were incarcerated in local, state, or federal prison, the vast majority of whom will reenter the workforce without the skills or experience necessary to succeed.

The takeaway from all of this is that among young black men, the youth unemployment crisis is a youth unemployment catastrophe. Not only are young black men distinctly disadvantaged in the job market, but in the absence of a concerted effort to change the status quo, they will be left behind as the economy moves forward.

Fortunately, the outlook isn’t completely dismal. In a report published last April, the Center for American Progress, offered a list of policies and approaches that would serve to “address the root causes of black men’s difficulties in the labor market, including high rates of incarceration, limited education and discrimination.” The recommendations range from combating racial discrimination from employers, to improving education and early links to the labor market, as well as developing comprehensive re-entry services for ex-offenders. Beyond that, Congress can and should pursue a job stimulus program that provides teens with jobs in the public and nonprofit sectors, and offers subsidies to employers willing to hire more teens and young adults.

Congressional stalling notwithstanding, the Obama administration should immediately pursue policies aimed at alleviating unemployment among teens and young adults, with a particular focus on young black men. The time for action is now; the longer we wait to help young black men find the employment and skills they need, the more likely it is that a generation of black men will enter the workforce unprepared for the rigors and challenges of the modern job market.

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