Millennials in US / The plight of unemployed young people

If this month’s jobs report is any indication, it appears as if millenials will continue to have trouble living up to President Obama’s description of them as the generation that will build America’s future.

Things are bad all over, sure. The September jobs report is out with very little good news. Only 148,00 jobs were created in September, a big disappointment compared to the 180,000 predicted by many economists.

The sluggish economy does not bode well for anyone, but it’s especially bad for millennials who are suffering what the Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce calls “failure to launch.”

The September jobs report shows just how far behind millennials are falling. Currently, over 2 million of those 20-24-years-old are unemployed, with an unemployment rate of 12.9%. For the older half of millennials 25-34, the rate is 7.4% with 2.5 million unemployed.

The tale of unemployed millennials doesn’t end there, since the unemployment figures do not account for those who gave up looking for work after months of no success. According to Generation Opportunity, there are 1.7 million “missing workers” 18-29-years-old.

In light of the most recent jobs report, it doesn’t look like the trend will reverse in the near future. That means millennials are stuck, not moving ahead with rituals of economic coming-of-age, like owning a home.

“Just 75% of [people] 25-34 are employed – same as one year ago,” tweeted Jed Kolko, Chief Economist and VP of Analytics at Trulia. “They’ll need jobs in order to rent or buy.”

Forced to live at home, saddled with the majority of the $1tn worth of student debt, millennials have also been struggling to find jobs which would establish their financial independence. They’re taking fewer jobs and fewer well-paying jobs, not establishing new households, and neither spending nor saving.

“The lucky few among us who have been able to secure employment in today’s economy are more often than not finding themselves in part-time jobs for which they are overqualified and underpaid,” Evan Feinberg, president of Generation Opportunity, said of the Gen Y employment prospects.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via The Millennials’ failure to launch: searching the jobs report for answers | Money | theguardian.com.

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