Louisiana has 2nd Highest Rate of Unemployed Youth in Nation
Play
BATON ROUGE, La. - Youth employment in America has reached its lowest level since World War II, and Louisiana is one of the states that's struggling the most. A new report says 6.5 million teens and young adults in the U.S. were not in school or working last year.
In Louisiana, Teresa Falgoust, KIDS COUNT coordinator with Agenda for Children, says more than one in five of all of those aged 16 to 24 are not in class or on the job.
"Thirty years ago you could easily drop out of high school and get a good job in a factory, and now that's really no longer the case for many young people. And we've also seen a lot of older workers end up, with the recession, having to go towards more entry-level, lower-paying jobs that were historically taken by young people just entering the marketplace."
Falgoust says with the shift in the economy, there needs to be strengthening of the science and technical curriculum that's offered in Louisiana schools, so young people have the skills to succeed in the 21st century marketplace.
"We really as a state need to work together to figure out what types of jobs are really going to be available for young people in the future. There's the old saying about 'A lot of the jobs that kids in school today are going to be taking haven't even been thought up yet.' So we need to make sure that we have a flexible education system."
She says since disconnected youth are a very diverse group, the help that's offered has to reflect that.
"That ranges from programs that help recent high school dropouts with credit recovery and that kind of thing, as well as work force training programs that provide a mixture of internships, training, and other supports to help young people get back on track."
Louisiana's figure of 22 percent of co-called disconnected youth is the second-highest in the nation. The report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation also shows the numbers are even worse for minorities.
The full report, "YOUTH AND WORK: Restoring Teen and Young Adult Connections to Opportunity," is at www.aecf.org.
Play