Young people continue to suffer in the current job market.
A new job report out today shows teen employment remained stagnant from June to July, and there’s been no increase over last year.
Dr. Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, says a big part of the problem is that federal programs supporting summer job programs have disappeared.
He says that in the late 1990s, those programs employed one million teens. Today, they have essentially evaporated.
The closer you are to the bottom of the economic ladder, the harder it is to find a job, Sum says.
And while middle and upper class kids have networks to help them find jobs, poorer and minority teens don’t have that support, and have a much higher unemployment rate.
Guest
- Andrew Sum, director of theCenter for Labor Market Studiesat Northeastern University.
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