High Youth Unemployment Remains 'Troubling'

Generation Opportunity, a national, non-partisan youth advocacy organization, is announcing its Millennial Jobs Report for December 2013. The data is non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) and is specific to 18-29 year olds:

•    The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds, which adjusts for labor force participation by including those who have given up looking for work, is 15.9 percent (NSA). The (U-3) unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds is 9.5 percent (NSA).

•    The declining labor force participation rate has created an additional 1.880 million young adults that are not counted as “unemployed” by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs.

•    The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year old African-Americans is 24.2 percent (NSA); the (U-3) unemployment rate is 16.7 percent (NSA).

•    The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year old Hispanics is 16.8 percent (NSA); the (U-3) unemployment rate is 10.5 percent (NSA).

•    The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year old women is 13.7 percent (NSA); the (U-3) unemployment rate is 8.5 percent (NSA).

Evan Feinberg, President of Generation Opportunity, issued the following statement:

"The unacceptably high youth unemployment rate is troubling because we are the most creative, innovative generation in American history. We are developing new technologies, saving lives, and making this country better. The only thing holding us back is the constraint of government.

The real shame is there are easy policy solutions that would free our generation to realize our potential. We need to stop spending our economy into a tailspin and eliminate red-tape and other barriers to work."

Generation Opportunity is a national, non-partisan organization advocating for economic opportunity for young people through less government and more freedom.