The Obama economy, just not working out to well for the young folks.. But the aspect of this mess I find more disturbing is the numbers around what economists call "youth unemployment." The U.S. unemployment rate for workers under 25 years old is about 20%. Daniel Henninger: Joblessness: The Kids Are Not Alright - WSJ.com
We are, we are....the youth of the nation. (now you guys are gonna have the song stuck in your head).
Older folks are now working in the traditional youth jobs. It started during the last jobless recovery.
From Henninger's column: " In the final month of 2009, these were European unemployment rates for people under 25: Belgium, 22.6; Spain, 44.5; France, 25.2; Italy, 26.2; the U.K., 19; Sweden, 26.9; Finland, 23.5. [A deviation from those high rates is] Germany, at 10% [which] uses an "apprentice" system to bring young people into the work force, though that system has come under stress for a most relevant reason: a shortage in Germany of private-sector jobs. " The killer for youth opportunities in America is, primarily I think, the minimum wage law. It keeps youth out of the types of jobs that they can do with their limited skills, and work experience. My experience in my construction company was this: I would prefer to pay more than minimum wage for some experience in the field. This shut out people with little or no experience. Those in the age group from say 17 to 21 too often so lacked experience that minimum wage was much more than they were worth to me. They required so much supervision and direction from me or from others who I had to pay to provide that supervision, that what they could produce was not worth what they had to be paid. Even shovelling out a ditch, or doing site clean-up, can better be done by someone with a complete skill set than a person completely unused to production. Even construction work includes all kinds of manual tasks which are too complex to accomplish without at least some experience. The most useful many of them can be is to just be "go-fer"s, to pay attention to the organization of the work so that they can act as my "legs" or just be "handy", to lend a hand at critical moments, but otherwise just be available for those events. Until they have learned the nomenclature, the sequence of events required in operations, some skill with the tools of the trade, too many of the people in the aforementioned age group are almost more a hindrance than a help. Therefore the minimum wage law tends to keep them unemployed or from getting that first job which would be so valuable in learning to work cooperatively with others, show up on time, learn to listen and take complex orders, keep their minds on what they are about. I always found it more useful and efficient to have a couple of "skilled" workers, perhaps paying them twice minimum wage, and then rely on "casual" laborers at relatively high labor rates (3 or 4 times minimum wage) but using them only to take up slack, or for jobs which my other people might not produce top quality work. But instead of doing that we are getting politicians who are seriously contemplating making "internships" no longer permissable to those people young enough to have personal situations in which they have living accommodations (at home with parents) with which they could work to learn a field that otherwise will be denied them.
The "Obama" economy? Really Lumpy? Outsourcing began under Reagan, and it was his economic policies that raised or foreign debt to the degree that it started. Bush and company were in power for the eight long years it took to plow the fields with salt. You might want to give Obama a minute (or at least a full term) to try and repair the damage done.
