For months now, pundits have exchanged opinions about who is bearing the brunt of the economic slowdown, with older workers and minorities typically getting first mention.
But now comes an analysis that suggests young people may have felt the harshest blow.
Employment for Americans ages 16 to 24 fell by 1.092 million in 2001, according to a report by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies. And last September and October, as employers shed jobs after the terrorist attacks ground some businesses to a halt, young people suffered 95 percent of all job losses, the study said.
Dips in the temporary labor pool and in the retail sector, which employ disproportionate numbers of younger workers, are partly to blame. But Andrew Sum, a Northeastern University professor and coauthor of the study, said the collapse of technology firms that hired newly minted graduates as well as people still in college also played a part in the rise of youth joblessness.
What's worse, he added, many young people are ineligible for unemployment benefits because they do not meet minimum earning requirements.
Young full-time workers without college degrees were more likely to lose their jobs than others, the study reported. Unemployment among out-of-school African American youths rose by 7 percentage points in the past year, a situation that is unlikely to improve quickly, even if the economy is growing again.
Some experts speculate greater problems are on the horizon, from reduced investments and spending to a lessened desire to start families by today's youngsters as they age.
"The joblessness is only an outward and visible sign -- and it's huge," said Robert Taggart, another author of the Northeastern study and a former education official during the Carter administration.
Gregg Irish, director of the D.C. Department of Employment Services, said the District has been particularly hard hit by youth joblessness. In 2000, the last year for which statistics are available, the unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24 was 33 percent.
Two years ago, spurred by the stark figures, the District won a $32 million youth opportunity grant to develop education and literacy programs for impoverished young people. Money for that and similar programs has been cut from the Bush administration's 2003 budget, Irish lamented.
