Youth, Jobs, and the Future: Problems and Prospects
Lynn S. Chancer, Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, and Christine Trost
Abstract
This book confronts the persistent issues of youth unemployment and worsening socioeconomic precarity in the United States. While overall unemployment has declined, the unemployment rate remains nearly twice as high for young people 16–19 years of age and nearly three times as high for those aged 20–24. Millions of youth are neither in school nor working, and rates of unemployment and underemployment are nearly two to three times higher for black and Latino youth. Despite these glaring statistics, far more attention has been given to diminished social prospects facing young people in Europe th ... More
This book confronts the persistent issues of youth unemployment and worsening socioeconomic precarity in the United States. While overall unemployment has declined, the unemployment rate remains nearly twice as high for young people 16–19 years of age and nearly three times as high for those aged 20–24. Millions of youth are neither in school nor working, and rates of unemployment and underemployment are nearly two to three times higher for black and Latino youth. Despite these glaring statistics, far more attention has been given to diminished social prospects facing young people in Europe than in America, and this is what makes this book so important. The volume’s Introduction places the issue in a global and national context, while suggesting a range of solutions and discussing the distinctive cultural ideology of the American dream as it intersects with young people's diverse experiences. Chapters in each of the book’s four sections explore structural and cultural causes of youth unemployment, their ramifications for both native and immigrant youth, and how both middle- and working-class youth across diverse races and ethnicities are affected within and outside the legal economy. Overall, the book insists that because the youth of today face greater insecurity than earlier generations, the time has come to address factors like technological changes, the rise of the 24/7 and “gig” economy, and the polarization between “good” and “bad” jobs; thus, the book features chapters on potential solutions including effective school-to-work models, shorter and shared hours, full employment, and basic income.
Keywords:
youth unemployment,
socioeconomic precarity,
unemployment rate,
underemployment,
native youth,
immigrant youth,
working-class youth
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190685898 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2018 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190685898.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Lynn S. Chancer, editor
Professor of Sociology, Hunter College
Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, editor
Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
Christine Trost, editor
Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, UC Berkeley
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