{"id":13548,"date":"2015-05-08T12:47:13","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T17:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/for-young-americans-unemployment-returns-to-pre-recession-levels\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:19:56","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:19:56","slug":"for-young-americans-unemployment-returns-to-pre-recession-levels","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2015\/05\/08\/for-young-americans-unemployment-returns-to-pre-recession-levels\/","title":{"rendered":"For young Americans, unemployment returns to pre-recession levels"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2015\/05\/08\/for-young-americans-unemployment-returns-to-pre-recession-levels\/ft_15-05-08_unemployedshare\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-269651\"><img data-dominant-color=\"efeee5\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #efeee5;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"241\"  srcset=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2015\/05\/FT_15.05.08_unemployedShare.png?resize=480,181 480w, https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2015\/05\/FT_15.05.08_unemployedShare.png?resize=640,241 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 480px, (max-width: 782px) 782px, 640px\" class=\"wp-image-24972 not-transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2015\/05\/FT_15.05.08_unemployedShare.png\" alt=\"Young People Make Large Share of Unemployed\" ><\/a><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At 5.4%, April&#8217;s\u00a0seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was the lowest it&#8217;s been in seven years, though essentially unchanged from March, according to Friday&#8217;s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That&#8217;s a 4.6-percentage-point drop since October 2009, when\u00a0it peaked at 10%. No doubt, this trend should be good news for job seekers.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But if you&#8217;re a teenager or young adult, you&#8217;re much less likely to have seen significant\u00a0job market improvement compared with older adults. Our analysis of the latest employment data finds that last month, more than half (50.9%) of the nation&#8217;s nearly 8\u00a0million unemployed people are between the ages of 16 and 34 \u2013 even though that\u00a0group makes up\u00a0just over a third of the civilian labor force.<!--more--><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a sense, though, that disparity represents a return to normal patterns. The youngest age cohorts consistently have the highest unemployment rates \u2013 at least since 2000, which is as far back as we ran the numbers. And while unemployment soared among all age groups during the Great Recession, the youngest workers were hit exceptionally hard: In 2010, unemployment averaged 25.8% among 16- to 19-year-olds, and 15.5% among 20- to 24-year-olds. (While these age-specific data aren&#8217;t adjusted for seasonal variations, they only include people working or actively looking for work \u2013 not, for instance, people who aren&#8217;t counted as part of the labor force because they&#8217;re still in school.)<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2015\/05\/08\/for-young-americans-unemployment-returns-to-pre-recession-levels\/ft_15-05-08_unemployedrates\/\"><img data-dominant-color=\"ece6e2\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #ece6e2;\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"425\"  srcset=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2015\/05\/FT_15.05.08_unemployedRates.png?resize=200,425 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 480px, (max-width: 782px) 782px, 640px\" class=\"wp-image-24969 not-transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2015\/05\/FT_15.05.08_unemployedRates.png\" alt=\"US young people have higher unemployment\" ><\/a><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The recession, in fact, acted to spread out unemployment a bit more evenly across age groups. At the peak of the previous business cycle, in\u00a0December 2007, 53.2% of the unemployed were ages 16 to 34, and 35.4% were ages 35 to 54. In January\u00a02010, when non-seasonally adjusted unemployment peaked, the youngest adults&#8217; share had fallen to 47.4%, while the 35-to-54 share rose to 38.9%.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since then, unemployment has\u00a0come down sharply across all age groups, but it&#8217;s\u00a0fallen the least for \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 the youngest workers. The unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds last month was 15.6%, a 42% decrease from the level in January 2010. Among 35- to 69-year-olds, who account for more than three-fifths of the civilian labor force, just 3.9% were unemployed in April, a 55% decline from the January 2010 level; there were only minor variations within that older group.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than half (50.9%) of the nation&#8217;s nearly 8 million unemployed for April are ages 16 to 34 \u2013 even though that group makes up just over a third of the civilian labor force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":null,"sub_title":"","_crdt_document":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"bylines":[{"key":"b4c479ea6e9e1e003b72aecd3177ad30","termId":842}],"acknowledgements":[],"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[]},"categories":[29,234,232,440,246,442],"bylines":[842],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-13548","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","category-generations-age","category-business-workplace","category-economic-conditions","category-recessions-recoveries","category-unemployment-1","category-unemployment-2","bylines-drew-desilver","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states"],"label":"Short 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