Age 18-29 Joblessness Sky-High — Lifetime of Meaningless Idleness At Stake

From Roy Beck — NumbersUSA

I looked out over the sea of 200 down-and-outers in our church basement Saturday night as they ate a hot meal and waited for their free bags of groceries and bus passes. I especially concentrated on those in their 30s, 40s and 50s, many of whom have hardly held down a job in their adult years — living dependent, unproductive and sadly unfulfilling lives. Often, the road to these lives was paved during their late teens and early twenties when they found no hope in the job market — making continued importation of foreign workers at this moment unconscionable.

This is why, in my appearance last week before a select panel of Colorado leaders at Denver University, I focused most of my attention on current joblessness in the 18-29 age group. We are minting a whole new generation of the idle dependent — perhaps for a lifetime.

Everybody is concerned about an official unemployment rate for the total U.S. population of more than 8%. But look how much worse it is for those who are getting their first taste of the work world.

Latest available official unemployment rates for the 18-29 age group with only a high school diploma (actively looking for a job but can’t find one) are:

• 12.5% for foreign-born
• 15.7% for native-born Hispanic Americans
• 17.6% for native-born Americans (all races)
• 26.1% for native-born Black Americans

I increasingly fear that if the habits of work are not inculcated during that 18-29 age period, most people are lost to the work world. This country’s governmental and private charity services (combined with at least a bit of family help) provide just enough for most people to survive. Once they learn they can survive without working — and if they have never truly experienced the pride and success of earning regular, living wages — it can take a substantial effort to entice them back into the labor market.

Corporation lobbyists on the right and open-borders advocates on the left would rather see businesses fill jobs with eager foreign workers than to establish new recruitment channels among disaffected American workers.

Despite those incredible unemployment rates (shown above) among America’s less-educated workers, the immigration advocates of right and left continue to push for an increase in the recent new work permit level of 138,000 each month (most of them competing for the same jobs as the less-educated Americans).

The open-borders leaders — U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Council of La Raza, AFL-CIO — not only are eager to abandon the unemployed, less-educated Americans older than age 29 who they have come to believe can’t be employed. They also are willing to create millions more “unemployable” Americans out of the 18-29 group who are losing employment opportunities at every turn to foreign workers.

The jobs situation for the 18-29 groups is even worse than the unemployment figures show.

The unemployment percentage is only for those who are actively looking and cannot find a full-time job. If you also count those who want a full-time job and can only find a part-time job, and also those who aren’t looking for a job at all any more, you will find this:

% Who Don’t Have A Full-Time Job

• 39.3% of foreign-born
• 35.7% of native-born Hispanic Americans
• 37.3% of native-born Americans (all races)
• 47.1% for native-born Black Americans

I ask again why a country’s government would continue authorized immigration of more than a million a year when we have this kind of labor surplus.

Don’t get me wrong about those seeking monthly assistance at our church this weekend. Many of them are not the idle dependent. Rather, they have just lost their jobs in recent months or even days. More than anything, our government should not be using immigration to keep these people from getting back to work.

But there is no question that many of the people in that basement would be difficult to hire. They need a lot of training and nurture to get back into the job market — if they were ever there. We shouldn’t be accelerating the creation of the next generation of the idle dependent by continuing immigration during a jobs depression.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA

 
Views and opinions expressed in blogs on this website are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect official policies of NumbersUSA.

 
Article Source: Numbers USA