Unemployment Today Means Poverty Tomorrow for Teenagers

What was your first job? A paper route? Pizza delivery? Stocking shelves at your local grocery store?

Mine was waitressing. I was so terrible at it that I dropped a tray of drinks on my prom date's parents. Oops.

If the youth job market keeps going the way it has, summer jobs may be something you can only tell your kids about, like the typewriter or cassette tapes.

A group of teens are marching on the U.S. Capitol today, demanding that Congress do something to help change that. They say without summer and after-school jobs, today's young people will face a future of crime, poverty and violence.

Research from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University shows that youth unemployment is at a whopping 70+ percent. It's not just the Great Recession either. Jobs that used to go to youth are being taken by retirees and stay-at-home moms reentering the workplace, causing joblessness among teens to rise 16 percent since 2000.

Last year's stimulus bill authorized over a billion dollars for youth summer jobs, and Congress recently considered continuing and expanding that coverage. An amendment to the Senate jobs bill would have put $1.3 billion towards summer jobs and another $1.3 billion toward year-round opportunities. But that amendment was recently struck down.

The teens marching today say they need that money allocated, asking for their own TARP -- Teen Age Relief Program. Tell your representatives to give America's teens a bailout!

Today's teens aren't just missing out on extra cash. Youth who don't work now are much less likely to work later in life, says Jack Wuest, executive director of the Alternative Schools Network, one of the sponsors of the protest.

"These kids are going to become a burden on society," Wuest told me. "If we don't employ these kids now, how are they going to work for us when we're older?"

In addition to wreaking havoc on our future social security system, teens that aren't working will find something to do, says Wuest, and it's usually something negative. Many of these teens turn to crime, gangs and violence, Wuest says, pointing to two teen shootings in Chicago just this last week.

"The immediate need is to get them off the streets to make it safer," says Wuest. "But we need to create something productive for them to do."

Youth jobs stimulate the economy, provide young people with valuable workforce skills and keep everyone safer by redirecting their energy into something positive.

I may have never attempted waitressing again, but my first job gave me skills I've used ever since: the ability to follow directions I didn't agree with, learning to work with people I didn't particularly like, and, most importantly, showing up and doing a good job, even when I didn't feel like it.

They may not be little kids anymore, but today's teens are vulnerable. They still need our guidance, our respect and our attention. We bailed out the banks to save our financial system from collapse, but unless we're as committed to the next generation of workers, there won't be a reason to keep it going.

Photo credit: Lori Kaplan