Too many young people are out of work!

Selected unemployment indicators, seasonally adjusted

Characteristic	Number of			Unemployment rates
	unemployed persons
	(in thousands)
	Jan.	Dec.	Jan.	Jan.	Sept.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.	Jan.
	2011	2011	2012	2011	2011	2011	2011	2011	2012
AGE AND SEX
Total, 16 years and over	13,919	13,097	12,758	9.1	9	8.9	8.7	8.5	8.3
16 to 19 years	1,479	1,316	1,324	25.4	24.5	24	23.7	23.1	23.2
16 to 17 years	538	501	539	27.8	26.3	25.2	23.3	27.8	28.8
18 to 19 years	937	826	788	24.1	23.2	23.2	23.4	21.3	20.5
20 years and over	12,441	11,781	11,434	8.4	8.4	8.3	8.1	8	7.7
20 to 24 years	2,305	2,221	2,050	15.1	14.6	13.9	14.2	14.4	13.3

The data above from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that young people 20 through 24 years are still suffering 13.3 percent unemployment. In the 18-19 age group, the rate is 20.5 percent. Things are getting better overall, and for young people (except the 16-17 year olds) but there are still too many out of work.

The teenagers should be in school. It makes little sense for them to be unemployed in such large numbers when they could be preparing to enter the work force in a better way at a later age.

The impact of having very high unemployment among people in their early 20s will be with us for a very long time. On the one hand, since pay increases with time on the job, they will have lower pay for many years. On the other hand, they may well lose the opportunity to learn good work habits on the job at entry level positions while being exposed to the risk of developing bad work habits while unemployed. Since I didn't finish school until I was 35, it seems to me that these folk too should be working on their education if they don't have a job.

On the other hand, I got my first job at 13, worked during high school, and worked all through college and graduate school. Working and going to school probably did me some good.