Saving teens’ hopes, a meeting worth covering


We know joblessness is a headache that isn’t going away today. We know that the black and Latino communities have suffered greatly in jobs lost and jobs that won’t ever return.

But how about teens?

Our economic collapse has tossed teens into a job wasteland. The rate of teens who worked this summer was the lowest since the government began its record keeping.

And for some it was worse. The jobless rate for teens, the government said in August, was 18 percent. The rate for black teens was 30 percent.

Why does this matter?

Here’s one explanation.

“The substantial drop in teen employment prospects has had a devastating effect on the nation’s youngest teens (16-17), males, blacks, low income youth, and inner city, minority males,” wrote Andrew Sum in a report on teen summer employment for the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. “Those youth who need work experience the most get it the least, another example of the upside down world of labor markets in the past decade.”

It’s not a new story. But’s an important story. One that needs to be told and explained and dealt with in terms of solutions, not just heartbreak. We don’t have a choice unless we want to witness more lives lost, and a growing toll of violence.

That’s why the town hall meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 2nd on  teen joblessness is an event you should consider for new ideas, for new angles, and for renewing your passion or a story that matters.

And what makes the ethnic news media so vital and insures its survival is that it talks about what matters again and again until it gets fixed and something else comes up.

See you at the meeting. And if you do any reporting now or after or reporting in the last few weeks that you want to brag about or pass along, please send it my way. And if want some suggestions, let’s talk.

saludos

 

Steve Franklin; steve@chicagoistheworld.org

 

 



Written by on October 26, 2011

Filed Under: ETHNIC MEDIA, EVENTS

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