The Young Jobless

To a nation that considers itself affluent and prides itself on opportunity for all, the persistently high U.S. unemployment rate is an acute embarrassment. Last week the Labor Department announced that 6.1% of the work force was out of work in February, the highest number in 15 months. Some economists blamed the increased unemployment on bad weather, noting that the biggest drops were in the weather-sensitive construction, farming and durable-goods industries. Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz, echoing a familiar New Frontier theme, blamed the trouble on something more basic. "Our economy today is simply not expanding fast enough," he said. "It must do so if we are to avoid an economic downturn."

The latest statistics show a bothersome rise of 124,000 in joblessness among men over 19, and an increase in the number of workers who have been out of work for 15 weeks or more. But the most disturbing figure is the number of unemployed teenagers--up 103,000 to 812,000, or 15.6% of their group. This week the President's first annual manpower report to Congress warned that if present tendencies continue, total unemployment will hit 7% by 1967. It noted a continuing failure to find enough jobs for young people. Since 1947, U.S. employment has risen only 17%, while the work force has climbed 21%. In the 1960s, workers under 25 will account for 26 million new arrivals in the labor market--"a far greater number," says the President's report, "than the country has ever had to educate, train and absorb into employment in any previous ten-year period." Some 7.5 million of them will not even have finished high school, and will be seeking unskilled jobs at a time when the number of jobs for the unskilled is steadily declining.

The postwar baby boom has long been expected to provide expanding markets in the '60s, since growing numbers of young people stimulate the need for new schools and recreational facilities, and should touch off a burst of homebuilding and durable-goods sales when the young marry. Yet without a sudden spurt of economic growth or a determined effort to upgrade the skills of its youth, the U.S. may well find that when the new wave of young people begin to reach working age in huge numbers in 1965, many of them will be lining up for unemployment allotments instead of providing new customers for factories.

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