Posts Tagged: summer youth jobs

Chicago’s teen idles

Alejandra Cancino of the Chicago Tribune reports on the continued lack of jobs for Chicago teens and that many teens will remain unemployed through the summer. Illinois teens have a 27.5 percent unemployment rate, a number that the federal government is not doing much to change. “This summer, Illinois is facing the loss of 18,000 jobs for teenagers as a result in cuts in federal stimulus funds,” Cancino writes.

So federal programs can’t help teens get jobs, and it’s apparent that the free market can’t either. Chicago businesses are “taking a wait-and-see approach” to hiring more workers, blaming gas prices and a lack of consumer confidence. This lack of confidence in the private sector to hire more workers has been going on since 2008.

DOL: We can’t get you a job, but we can get you a place to look for jobs

The U.S. Dept. of Labor has launched a Web site that helps 16-24 year-old’s find summer jobs, reports Sandra Guy of the Chicago Sun-Times. The Web site may prove useful but it pales in comparison to DOL’s previous use of federal stimulus money to subsidize summer youth jobs. That money ran out last year and cities like Chicago have since cut down on their hiring programs.

A summer fling with employment

Here is some good, but not great, news for the Chicago job market: the Obama administration has provided a $11.1 million grant, via the stimulus bill, so the city can expand its summer youth jobs program. (more…)

White House discovers joys of direct job creation

Via Adam Doster of Progress Illinois, Jared Bernstein, Joe Biden’s top economic adviser, has an impassioned blog post that argues “Put Illinois to Work” and other federally subsidized, state-run job creation programs must be extended past their Sept. 30 completion date. (more…)

CRUEL SUMMER: THE NATION’S SIX-WEEK SUMMER FLING WITH EMPLOYING ITS MOST VULNERABLE

The White House Council on Economic Advisers issued a report Sep. 11 claiming that the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, better known as the stimulus bill, has created up to 1.1 million jobs. But all stimulus jobs are not created equal – 227,000 are summer-only employment for poor or otherwise disadvantaged people, ages 14-24. These jobs were for 20-30 hours a week, paid the minimum wage, and ended after 6-10 weeks. Summer is over – and so are these 227,000 jobs.

About $1.2 billion of the stimulus bill went toward bringing back the summer-only employment program, a part of the Workforce Investment Act youth program that runs out of the Labor Department. The mission of summer employment programs for disadvantaged youth is both vague and tantalizing – they’re supposed to spur consumer spending, provide for poor families, teach job skills, and open a world of possibilities for often ghettoized young people. The experience here in Chicago and across the country is that summer youth jobs begin to accomplish some of these goals. But summer jobs do not give disadvantaged young people what they really need – a year-round program to put them on track toward permanent employment.

Summer Stimulus

Summer youth jobs are the quintessential social program – conditionally funded by Democrats and reflexively opposed by Republicans. (more…)