Imagine a show about seven strangers picked to live together in a house. Their challenge? Find a real job (not one given to them by MTV) that provides a living wage, health insurance, and a career path. There’s no way out - not finding a job means the contestants on this show fail to support themselves or their families. That’s the real challenge facing us—young people in the US—and it’s rarely shown on TV.
The numbers are well known: the jobless rate jumped from a low of 3.8% in April 2000 to 6% in April 2003. In November 04, it stood at 5.4%. For African-Americans, unemployment that month was double that of the rest of the population: 10.8%. These numbers include hundreds of thousands of high school and college students and young workers.
Wall Street has no problem with a lack of jobs: mainstream economists often talk about maintaining a ‘healthy’ level of unemployment. Under capitalism, corporations will always use unemployment to maintain pressure on workers to work for lower pay. And in 2005, the Bush administration is firmly committed to defending the interests of big corporations, not working people. On Bush TV, the free market knows best, and corporate giveaways will magically create jobs. But not in the real world where young people and our families have to live.
The unemployment statistics don’t tell the whole story. According to the AFL-CIO, about 14.3 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. This is more than the official unemployment rate (8 million as of October 2004) because it also includes underemployment and the millions of people who have stopped looking for a job. Also, the official statistics don’t count the thousands of new immigrants, chronically unemployed and permanently stuck in temporary work situations. And the most-quoted numbers for the general population don’t tell the story of rural unemployment, unemployment in the African-American community, or youth unemployment.
An Uncertain Future
So what does unemployment look like for young people? The myth on Bush TV goes that first jobs are easy to find, and that they’re optional, like taking tennis lessons. In reality, sometimes the income is supplemental – but often it is crucial to a family’s situation.
The scarcity of jobs that forces older workers into low-wage, insecure positions means that first entry-level job may already be taken – maybe by your great-aunt, trying to supplement her Social Security check. And programs that provided summer jobs for high school students have in many cities fallen victim to state and city budget crises, brought on by the Bush tax cuts.
On Bush TV, job training means older workers who have been laid off getting re-wired for a ‘new economy’ of low-skill, low-wage jobs – not young people receiving the training they need to start a career.
On Bush TV, appointing some loyal cronies with Hispanic last names to his Cabinet might equal creating jobs for people of color. But in the real world, unemployment for African-Americans is higher than for any other group. Unmarried African-American men suffer from an astounding 19% unemployment, with unmarried African-American women around 15%.
It’s conventional wisdom by now that a college degree is no guarantee of a secure and fulfilling future. With a higher education system largely segregated by class, only those graduating from an elite private college can be fairly sure of employment. Layla, a teacher in Brooklyn, New York, says she urges her 9th graders to make getting into college their number one goal. But the encouragement rings false sometimes – “My students are mostly from poor families,�? she says. “Their circumstances make it more difficult to graduate. And even if they do, I just don’t see the jobs out there.�?
Settling for Less
Chad, a 25-yr old from Michigan, thought he would always be able to find steady work as an ironworker. But when jobs dried up, he had no backup plan for feeding his daughter. He now works for a big package delivery company that forces him to pay for his own truck and offers no benefits. He was almost fired for attempting to start a health insurance pool with fellow workers.
This is underemployment – the lack of quality jobs – and it particularly affects young people. We now face an economy where Wal-Mart and Manpower (a giant temp agency) are the biggest employers in the country. So when a young person makes their way through the reality challenge and finds a job, it’s likely to be one with low pay, no benefits, no job security, no future, no union, no opportunities to move up, and you better forget about retirement. For most of us, a job at Starbucks is a big deal because, at the very least, they provide a health insurance plan.
Most importantly, the lack of job security constantly experienced by all sectors of youth is a kind of enforced unemployment: we are often the last hired, and the first fired.
MEET NICOLE:
Nicole is a twenty-two year old African-American woman from Ohio, currently living in New York City. She graduated in May 2004 with a dual bachelor’s degree in Ethnic Studies and Sociology from Bowling Green State University. Since May, Nicole has been looking for a non-profit job working with under-served communities and communities of color that involves providing direct service and focuses on empowerment.
The biggest obstacles she faces are that a lot of jobs ask for 4 to 5 years experience and the state of the economy is not conducive to finding meaningful work, or work period. She has looked for a job in both New York and Ohio; she talked to about 6 places in Ohio that were looking for someone with a higher degree or more experience.
Over the last 6 months, she has put in at least 50 applications and gotten no interviews. This is not what Nicole expected to find after graduating from college: "A big part of my family is unemployed – a good 60% - my mother, my brothers – it’s due partly to lack of education and also to lack of jobs. Since I’m the one with the degree, it was expected that I’d get a job right away, but that’s just not the reality. For my family, it’s worse than the situation 4 years ago, it’s a totally different situation.�?
MEET LETICIA:
Leticia, a twenty-six year old Puerto Rican woman from the South Side of Chicago, joined the army in 2003. She considers what motivated her to join in the first place: "I guess the benefits of security, having a place to stay, having the army pay for school, having benefits - all the things that go along with the service. " Now, based on her experience, she observes, "It's not everything your recruiter says it is - they have to glorify it to sell it."
Before entering the Army, Leticia couldn’t find a stable job. She also studied at a community college, taking classes about the criminal justice system. Eventually she decided to join the army.
"[The recruiters] target people that don't have career goals or are just out there, fresh out of high school. They need to recruit manpower,�? says Leticia. “Last year the raise to join was $30, this year it's $130. People are not signing up like they used to.�?
Leticia doesn’t encourage others to join the military as a path to success: "I would tell a person considering [enlisting]: For someone fresh out of high school - no, don't join the military! Go to school, get a degree and then go to the military if you want to."
Enlisting is also a serious commitment that you can’t run away from. “There are a lot of people that go AWOL [absent without leave],�? she observes. “What happens when you go AWOL is that the military doesn't look for you anymore, they just wait. When you try to go get a new I.D., [or] if you get pulled over for something, they take you back to where you were when you went AWOL. So that's another reason why you shouldn't do it: if you're a young person, you could mess up your life before you start."
Leticia is leaving in January for Kuwait, where she will stay for one month before beginning her service in Sadr City, Iraq.
MEET ALEXUS:
Alexus is a thirty-one year old law school graduate from Massachusetts who has spent the last 2 1/2 years searching for an attorney position. Alexus, who passed the bar exam on the first try and is licensed to practice law in both New York and Massachusetts, has applied to and interviewed for literally hundreds of positions. Like Nicole, he has found that no one wants to hire him without experience: “There are jobs out there but they all want 2 to 3 years of experience.�?
Alexus is particularly interested in asylum and refugee law. “I tried doing pro-bono work for immigrant organizations, to volunteer and get experience, but they said they didn’t have room for me—even as a volunteer!�? he says. He got one break through a personal connection. But, when the more senior attorneys asked for a raise, the firm had to lay off Alexus to pay for it. “I was the last hired and the first fired,�? he remembers.
After that Alexus worked as a contract attorney for a large firm—essentially as a temp—where he got one job that lasted for 3 months and then ended. He was even turned down for paralegal positions he applied for because he’s over-qualified.
Recently, he seriously considered joining the Army’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, the law firm of the US Army. “For me to consider JAG is against everything I stand for. But JAG is the one employer that seems to always be hiring.�?
For the past few months, Alexus has been working at a mall in order to pay the bills. “It’s been a very humbling experience, and very frustrating,�? he says. However, he remains positive about finding something in the future: “As much as I’ve been disillusioned, I’m optimistic.�?
A Necessary Evil or Just Evil
During the 2004 election, President Bush failed to present a solution to the growing economic crisis in this country. Multi-national corporations have moved production overseas to find cheap labor and more profit. Private companies and public employers alike are relying more and more on temp workers, subcontracting and union busting in order to save costs.
But there are answers out there. Unemployment is not, as big business would like you to believe, a necessary evil. Fighting unemployment is a struggle that can take many forms. It interacts with the fight for living wage jobs, health insurance for all, organizing more unorganized workers, raising the minimum wage, protecting social security, fair trade policies, amnesty for undocumented immigrants, and funding for education and social services.
Unemployed young people can raise their fists and ask some real questions. Why, during a jobs crisis, are massive federal funds being wasted on the occupation of Iraq, the ‘defense’ budget, and tax cuts for the super-rich? Why don’t politicians even talk about the creation of a large-scale public works jobs program like this country had in the 1930’s? Why does unemployment insurance only go to laid-off workers, and not someone who can’t find a first job – discriminating against youth? Union membership is the best job security there is – why are youth among the least organized sections of the population?
Nicole, Leticia, Alexus, and millions of other young people don’t know what the next episode of their “real world�? will bring. But as we struggle, we can at least start to separate the news from the commercials, reality TV from reality, and the truth from the lies. Asking questions is only the first step.
C. Webb is 23 years old and a union organizer in the Bay Area. She is a member of the YCL’s National Council. She is currently organizing city and county temp workers.
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