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Background

Youth face unique barriers to employment. In New York City, more than 200,000 disconnected youth aged 16-24 are out-of-school, unemployed, and without sufficient literacy and/or job skills.

The following is an excerpt from "The Time is Now: Implementing One System for New York City's Emerging Workforce." This working paper was developed by New York City's Young Adult Task force, an 'ad hoc' group of public and private stakeholders with responsibility for or an interest in seeing young adults succeed. The NYCETC is a contributing member.

(Click here for the full report.)

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYED, OUT-OF-SCHOOL YOUNG ADULTS

The numbers alone speak volumes. Recent census data show that over one million 16-to-24 year-olds live in New York City — 12.5 percent of the city's population. Among those are more than 200,000 older disconnected youth who are out-of-school, unemployed, and without sufficient literacy and/or job skills. A 2005 report by NYC's Community Services Society (CSS) represents the most recent assessment of "inactive" young adults who are not in school and not working.¹ Using the Current Population Survey CSS found that New York has a far greater share of youth who are disconnected than the national urban average; 1.7 times more disconnected urban youth (16.2%) than the nation as a whole (9.3%). They include drop-outs, young people coming out of jail, foster care youth and those who have been 'pushed out' of the public schools.²

An earlier study by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Analysis also cited New York City as having the most out-of-school, out-of-work young adults of any city in the United States. The number of disconnected young adults has grown since the end of the 1990s boom — between 20,000 and 30,000 of the city's teens leave NYC high schools each year without graduating. Based on reported dropout figures and an estimated 10 percent increase in this population from 2000 to 2005, the number of out-of-school and out-of-work older youth in the city could be in the neighborhood of 240,000 or higher this year or next.

Using data from the Current Population Survey, CSS tabulated how many of the one million-plus 16 through 24 year-old New Yorkers were in-school or in the labor market in 2003. The pie-chart on the next page "classifies these young people into one of four mutually exclusive categories. Slightly more than half (51.3 percent) were in school. A little more than a quarter (27.4 percent) were not at school, but were working. A small proportion (5.3 percent) were out of school and unemployed (jobless and actively seeking work). Finally, one-in-six (16.0 percent) was neither in school, employed, nor seeking employment."³ While the statistics are not aggregated to show ages within this range, one can assume that the percentage of youth in school drops even more sharply for youth between 18 and 24.

Out-of-school young adults, particularly immigrants, African-Americans, and Hispanics lacking education and job skills tend to be locked into the low-end of the labor market through adulthood (low-level sales and services, and laborer/helper/cleaner) with little chance for advancement.⁴ Few earn a salary above the poverty line.⁵

As high as these numbers are, too little has been done over the past fifteen years to plug young adults back into school, skills training, or a job even though there are programs that really work.⁶ The Task Force conducted an informal analysis of locally-based nonprofits serving older youth to determine the number of young people served by both public and private funds. They conservatively calculated that fewer than 10,000 received any services in 2002. The various programs ran the gamut from "tryout" job placements and skill training to G.E.D. preparation and intensive academic coaching to help individuals get back on track to a degree. The best estimate of those served translates into a meager five to eight percent of the young adults who could benefit from career development strategies and employer connections.

This is obviously bad news for New York's older youth, but it spells trouble for the local economy as well which is facing an increasingly serious and measurable gap in the labor force pipeline.⁷ Today tens of thousands of low-skilled young people face a bleak future, at the same time as there is a growing skill shortage in a number of industry sectors within the New York workforce. This emanates from three factors — one structural and the others demographic. First, jobs are increasingly demanding higher skills, second; the most skilled workers are retiring and leaving the workforce, third, (and the only one that is potentially reversible) is the high percentage of unskilled and undereducated youth that 'should' be filling the first two labor gaps but do not have the skills to do so.

Indeed, the nation is at the front edge of an unprecedented demographic shift in which some 70 million members of the Baby Boom generation — the largest, best educated and most highly skilled age cohort in United States history — will begin to retire in large numbers. At the same time that skilled workers are aging out, there is a youth boom approaching — census projections note that there will be an additional 200,000 youth in the city by 2010.⁸ Employers frequently complain that young people are unprepared for the demands of today's workplace but they also recognize that something must be done about it. Taken together, these major transitions offer both a tremendous opportunity, for young workers to move into well-paying jobs, and tremendous economic and social risk, if we fail to replace the millions of retiring workers with younger workers that have equivalent or better skills.

In other cities business leaders, government officials and nonprofit executives are recognizing that they need to combine forces to address the workforce needs of their community.⁹ Nationally, the Ford, Annie E. Casey and Rockefeller foundations are supporting a new initiative called the Workforce Intermediary Project.¹⁰ California is working to implement its All Youth One System strategy with more than 50 Youth Councils and a nonprofit intermediary, New Ways to Work. All these communities recognize that they have a vested interest in helping disconnected jobseekers connect with growth areas of the economy.

References:

1. In January 2005, NYC's Community Service Society reported that in 2003/2002 there were 220,000 disconnected and unemployed young people in NYC — with significantly more males than females. (back to text)
2. The term 'push-out' refers to past practices in some NYC secondary schools whereby low-performing high school students or those with too few credits to graduate were encouraged to drop-out.(back to text)
3. Mark Levitan. Out of School, Out of Work...Out of Luck? New York City's Disconnected Youth. Community Service Society. New York. 2005. The Young Adult Task Force Recommendations are focused on the 22.3 percent of young people neither in school or employed.(back to text)
4. Andrew Sum, Ishwan Khatiwada, et al. Paradox of Rising Teen Joblessness in an Expanding Labor Market: The Absence of Teen Employment in the National Jobs Recovery of 2003-2004. Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University. Boston. 2005. (back to text)
5. American Youth Policy Forum. See www.apyf.org/forum briefs/1997/fb041897.htm (back to text)
6. In its 1984 report, Reducing Youth Unemployment in New York City: The Case for a Fresh Approach, Interface found services for young people to be fragmented and uncoordinated and there was no city policy or structure to improve the situation. (back to text)
7. Youth suffered huge job losses in the 1970's and have never recovered. In addition older youth have suffered disproportionate job losses since 9/11. (back to text)
8. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau projected a 20% increase in NYC's youth population by 2010. Source: Out of School, Out of Work... Our of Luck? New York City's Disconnected Youth. Community Service Society, 2005.(back to text)
9. This alignment of interests and unified effort is occurring in Philadelphia, San Diego, Baltimore, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston. (back to text)
10. Efforts are underway in Austin, Boston, Northern California, here in NYC, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. (back to text)