Quite a few right-wing bloggers, including Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, got themselves snookered by a recent, lazily corrected article in The New York Post, written by Richard Wilner. Ampersand at Alas, a Blog provided the fact-checking application.
Among other mistakes in Wilner’s Obama-slamming piece was this bit in the lede published on September 27:
The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. — meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.
Wilner tweaked the boldfaced part a day later:
The number of young Americans without a job has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. — meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.
Buzzzzzt! Still half-wrong.
So how did Wilner screw up? By confusing the employment-population ratio for young men with the unemployment rate. That ratio for young men was 52.2% in July, according to the BLS press release.
As Ampersand pointed out,
... what happened is that Wilner is so ignorant that he doesn’t know the difference between the "unemployment rate" — the percent of people who are looking for work without success — and the "employment-population ratio," which is the percent of people who have a job.
It’s okay not to know that difference. Lots of smart people don’t. But if you’re going to write a column read by hundreds of thousands of people, it would be helpful to have a clue what you’re talking about.
But isn't this just a nitpick? Doesn't a 52.2% employment-population ratio signify an almost equally horrendous 47.8% unemployment rate for the youth cohort? No. What the Labor Department actually stated was that 51.4 percent of youth had a job in July. That is the worst record since statistics began being collected in 1948. However, only 63% were actually participating in the labor force, that is, working or actively seeking a job. So the gap is considerably smaller than Wilner's original take and his "correction" muddies the water as well.
Blaming Wilner for ignorance gives him too much credit. As is clear from much of the rest of his article, with extensive quotes from a Reagan-era appointee, and the failure to run a real correction, the intent seems to have been merely to blast the Obama administration.
However, objections to uncorrected errors and apparent motives in a Murdoch-owned megaphone should not overwhelm what is clearly a very big problem that has received far too little attention.
Let’s face it, the number of people aged 16-24 who want a job and can’t find one is nothing to downplay. It is bad. The official unemployment rate for those aged 16-to-19-years-old was 24.1% in July, the worst for any age demographic. Grim. Scary. And it has disturbing potential for these people’s future.
And it's not just the 16-to-24-year-olds, but the entire youth cohort – 16-34 years old – that is getting an extra share of suffering in our Great Recession. They are likely to keep suffering well beyond whenever the experts determine we’ve had a "full recovery."
The AFL-CIO’s report, Young Workers: A Lost Decade, provides some detail about how much suffering, but, unfortunately too little in the way of possible means to improve matters beyond unionization. The overall take can be summed up by a quotation from Jessica, a 31-year-old from Frankfort, N.Y.:
In the ‘90s we had such big dreams. Everything seemed possible. Me and all my friends were going to college and we believed the future was full of opportunity and plenty of jobs. But I look around at my friends and myself now, and we are in such enormous debt, and we’re not working the types of jobs we thought we would be. I was lucky enough to be able to get a home loan, but I have several friends who have been denied because of their massive student loans. Sometimes we wonder if it was really worth it to get an education for the price we’ve paid.
A nationwide survey by Peter D. Hart Research Associates compared results with a similar survey a decade ago. What’s happened in those 10 years? Employment, income and benefits have fallen sharply for young workers. The percentage of young workers with incomes of less than $30,000 a year has risen. Optimism has dropped along with their financial circumstances. "Today," the reports states, "just over half of young workers say they are more hopeful than worried about their economic future—that’s a 22-point drop from 1999, when more than three-quarters of young workers expressed more hope than concern about their economic futures"
There’s an increased breadth to the problems young workers face today. For instance, more than half make less than $30,000 a year. Seventy percent don’t have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses. Nearly two in five say they have had to delay education or professional development because they have no job or don’t get paid enough in the job they have. Those who have managed to get more education aren’t assured of getting a job for which they have the training. Twenty percent say they are over-qualified for their current job, and 22 percent are working outside their chosen field. Only 58 percent receive paid sick leave.
All of this has led young people to postpone changes we have in the past associated with adulthood. Thirty percent of those in the survey aged 18-34 were living with their parents.
In his misreading of the BLS statistics, Wilner missed something else of key importance: racial disparity. The July 2009 unemployment rate for young white men was 16.4 percent; for Asians, 16.3%; for Latinos, 21.6%. But for young African Americans, the rate was 31.2 percent, a devastating statistic exceeded only on American Indian reservations. These long-standing disparities which date back to ... well, probably to the abolition of slavery, need immediate and long-range attention.
Amid these gloomy results, A Lost Decade includes some encouraging news. Young workers embrace diversity in the workplace. By a 22 percent margin, they favor expanding public investment over reducing the deficit. They take a more progressive view on issues such as immigration. And they rank conservative economic approaches such as reducing taxes, government spending and regulation on business among the five lowest of 16 long-term priorities for Congress and the President.
A wise administration will capitalize on those attitudes.