The News Journal reported on Sunday that unemployment among young American workers is easing as the economy begins to recover. Young workers were the hardest hit by the recession, with a national unemployment rate of 16.3 percent for 19-to-24-year-olds, compared to 8.8 percent for all adults.
Things are even looking sunnier for the perennial late-bloomers of the labor market — younger workers.
In February, the jobless rate for 25- to 34-year-olds fell to 8.7 percent, the lowest since January 2009, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Last May, it had hit a high of 10.5 percent, nearly a percentage point higher than the U.S. average.
Delaware’s young workers are also seeing conditions improve — after peaking at 10.2 percent in 2009, the jobless rate for 25- to 34-year-olds improved to 9.1 percent last year — but still 1.6 points higher than the state average.
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Increasingly, in today’s tech-saturated and globally oriented economy, that education is crucial, said Susan B. Stoller, a longtime career counselor at Delaware Technical Community College in Stanton.
“I think employers have ratcheted up their minimum requirements for hiring,” she said. “They want more education. They want more technical skills. We’re in a much more competitive global economy. … It’s a good time to be in college.”
And it’s a good time to be enrolled in degree programs that stress those technical skills, or prepare students for specific careers in growing fields. That dynamic has increased the appeal of community colleges and career schools, and it has boosted student’s confidence they will be able to find a job. At Delaware Tech, even in this still-shaky labor market, placement rates of graduates top 90 percent.
Senator Coons has made job creation a top priority. Last fall Chris introducing the bipartisan AGREE Act to help small start-up companies expand and hire employees, and he also hosted job fairs last year that were attended by nearly 5,000 Delawareans. This spring Chris will host three more job fairs – one in each county in Delaware.
Click here to read the full article on The News Journal’s website.
Click here to learn more about Chris’ work to create jobs.
Click here to learn more about the upcoming job fairs.