An Essay on Youth Joblessness

THE HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT RATE of American youth, especially of black youth, has been a source of deep concern for many years. This concern has given rise to a voluminous literature. The purpose of this essay is not so much to review this literature as to distill from it some important elements of agreement and to reflect on their implications. In the American economic literature, the term youth generally refers to people between the ages of 16 and 24, and teenage refers to people between the ages of 16 and 19. The age categories 16-19 and 20-24, which are frequently used in U.S. government statistics, include people with very different patterns of activities, for these ages cover almost the whole transition from school to work. In the Census of 1980, which gives data by single years of age, the percentage of males in the labor force, including the armed forces, rises steadily from 31.7 percent at age 16 to 89.0 percent at age 24, with the largest jump between the ages of 17 and 18. The measured unemployment rate drops steadily from 18.0 percent at age 16 to 9.3 percent at age 24. Clearly, youth is not a homogeneous population. Measures of employment and unemployment are derived from administrative statistics such as payroll data or unemployment insurance records, or from household surveys. Administrative data, however, are not reported by age, so, all statistical information on youth employment and unemployment is from surveys. These include the Decennial Census, the Current Population Survey, the National Longitudinal Survey of young men, and the special survey of young black men in inner cities done for the National Bureau of Economic Research. A person is employed who does any paid work during the survey week; a person is unemployed who does no paid work during the survey week and is looking for work or is on layoff from a job. These definitions apply to students as well as to others. A student who works part-time after school or on weekends is employed and one who is seeking such part-time work is unemployed; both are in the labor force. The fraction of unemployed youth who are enrolled in school is surprisingly high. For example, in January 1985, according to the Current Population Survey, 50.4 percent of unemployed teenagers were in school. A youth not in school may be employed, unemployed, or out of the labor force. Youth who are in school or working (or