Data: Young Hit Hardest By Recession

If you cant get started it's hard to keep going.

Census data suggest that a cruel lesson of the recession to date is that the global distribution of technological skills has disadvantaged young adults even more than others. The reason is primarily that their higher income expectations make them less competitive than their Asian counterparts.

Government stimulus, a traditionally useful counterweight to private sector turmoil, has been ruled out by political forces driven - you guessed it - largely by retirees and other older age groups.

The longer term problem is that without the crucial experience provided in entry level jobs, younger workers are likely to remain less competitive from a global standpoint. There are solutions but without societal consensus, they remain unavailable in the near term. This will have implications for the ageing voters opposed to government spending, but belief systems, however erroneous, are for now more powerful than information systems. JL

MJ Lee reports in Politico:

Young people may be the biggest losers of the economic recession. According to the new 2010 census data released Thursday, the country’s young adult population, made up of mostly 20-somethings and 30-somethigs, is one of the worst hit by unemployment and poverty, with the state of the economy having a noticeable impact on their decision to delay marrying and moving out of their parents’ homes.

An analysis of the new data revealed that young adults face the highest unemployment since World War II and nearly one in five – higher than in any other demographic group — risk living in poverty. The AP called young people “the recession’s lost generation."

Employment among young adults 16 to 29 was 55.3 percent, down from 67.3 percent in 2000 and the lowest level since the end of World War II. For teenagers, employment stood at less than 30 percent.

Long-distance moves across state lines fell 4.4 percent to around 3.2 million among adults 18-34, also the lowest level since World War II, with 5.9 million Americans 25 -34 choosing to stay put in their parents’ homes.

With one young man out of five opting to continue living with their parents, men are nearly twice as likely as women to live with their parents, according to the Associated Press.

The recession has also had an effect on the decision to marry. For adults 18 and older, a record low of 51.4 percent of people were married last year, dropping from 57 percent in 2000. More specifically for young people 25-34, marriage hit another new low of 44.2 percent.

Child poverty also rose significantly. The number of Hispanic children living in poverty rose by half a million to 6.1 million, with the highest levels in California, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and Nevada. Hispanics make up 37 percent of children living in poverty, compared to the 30 percent for whites and 27 percent for blacks.