Jimmy Lawson said he tries to maintain an after-school job and during the summer break, a full-time job, but he hasn’t been having much.
Jimmy Lawson said he tries to maintain an after-school job and during the summer break, a full-time job, but he hasn’t been having much. “I’m so used to working so I can have my own money instead of depending on my parents all the time for the things I want. This is the first time in two years I don’t have a job to go to after I get out of school,” the 17-year-old high school senior said. Most of the jobs, especially at fast food places, are now taken by older people who need full-time work, squeezing out Lawson and his peers, he said. The teen said while he continues his search for a steady paycheck, he’s had to maintain lawns and does snow removal in his neighborhood. “I’ve actually received more money than I thought I would, but it would still be nice if I had something solid to go to each afternoon and on the weekends,” said Lawson, one of the many who’s factored in the state’s employment rate drop for the 16- to 19-year-old age group. The Chicago Urban League, the Illinois State Dropout Council and the Alternative Schools Network recently held a collaborative Youth Hearing on Education, Jobs and Justice to find ways to stop the ongoing problems of declining youth employment and curb the dropout crisis across the city and state. Only 49 percent of high school graduates in the city and 56 percent in the state, who did not continue on to higher education, were able to find employment last year. In 2008, only 19 percent of Black teens in Illinois – 15 percent in Chicago –were employed, according to a recently released report by the Boston-based Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. “When you factor in crime rates and the incarceration factor, coupled with the employment downward trend for the youths, its extremely dismal,” said the Urban League’s Acting President Herman Brewer. The Urban League, ISDC and ASN are calling for the immediate disbursement of $1.5 billion in federal stimulus funds for youth employment and re-enrollment programs nationwide. The money would help 25,000 jobless youths in the Illinois and 9,000 in Chicago. Last summer more than 19,000 youth were employed, thanks to the City of Chicago’s summer job program for youths, Youth Ready Chicago, and the nearly $43 million from federal, state and private funds. Students and young adults – ages 14 to 24 – held down jobs with various public and private agencies throughout the city. The average wage was $8.00 per hour, according to city officials. Federal stimulus funds, $17.3 million, afforded the city to add 7,300 additional spots to the program and a special $500,000 grant from the state allowed for youth to tap into the gardening market and video documentation of the summer program, said Ellen Messner, director of YRC. In the fall of 2009, the national teen employment rate dropped to 26.2 percent, while the employment rate for teens in the state fell 20 percentage points below the one for the year 2000, a new low for the state, according to the report. Forty-eight percent of the state’s teens were employed in 2000. Three years later the number slid down to 35 percent and remained steady until late 2009 when it dropped to 27.9 percent, the report stated. Nationally, 45 percent of the nation’s teens were employed in 2000. The number slid down to 36 percent in 2003 and remained steady until late 2009 when it dropped to 26 percent. No other age group has experienced employment declines of this magnitude in the current recession, the study indicated. Brewer and other education coalitions recommend the expansion of high school students’ access to school-based services such as work-study programs that allow students to get paid internship-type employment during a portion of the school day. Jesse Ruiz, the chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois State Dropout Council agreed with Brewer. “It’s imperative for us to provide our youth with the tools for success. If they aren’t in school, we need to get them back inside. They need to be equipped with the knowledge and experiences to help sustain them in the workforce and beyond,” said Ruiz.
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