Jobs, Justice and Peace

The lucky ones find jobs flipping burger patties at their neighborhood McDonald's or pitching bales of hay on Wyoming cattle ranches. The less fortunate kill time shooting baskets in asphalt schoolyards or hanging around the local pool hall. Always the most volatile, lowest-paid segment of the work force, America's job-seeking youth are headed for hard times this recession-plagued summer. According to Government statistics, 16.2% of youths between the ages of 16 and 19 are already unemployed; among young blacks the figure is nearly 30%. Unofficial estimates run much higher.

To demand more employment for disadvantaged youth, the Rev. Jesse Jackson last Saturday rallied 5,000 people--a fifth of the number expected--on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol. "We want jobs," they chanted. One placard read: HELP FOR CHRYSLER WHAT ABOUT US? The demonstration was preceded by a week of hard lobbying by Jackson, during which he met with President Carter to make a direct plea for more youth job funding. "We have a real depression in the black community," said Jackson.

The Carter Administration has both helped and hindered youths looking for their first jobs. It will be spending $3.5 billion this year to create a wide range of employment from trail building in national parks to neighborhood cleanup programs. But the Administration-backed hike in the minimum wage from $2.30 an hour in 1977 to the current $3.10 has hurt teen-age employment. At that rate, economists believe, many teen-agers are simply priced out of the market; businessmen, complaining that unskilled workers are not worth such salaries, are reluctant to hire them. What is more, some Administration job programs have been criticized as nothing but make-work projects. Grumbles Baron Claiborne, 15, a high school student who worked at a Boston recreation center last summer: "Those jobs don't give you nothing to do. I'd check in in the morning, then leave, shoot some baskets or something, and I'd still get paid."

Summer job prospects in many cities are bleak, as the line of unemployed adults grows. In Detroit, already burdened by auto industry layoffs, 32% of young white people and 54% of black youths aged 16 to 19 expect to be jobless. "A lot of the kids who have more leisure time because they can't get jobs are going to wind up in trouble," frets Norman Isotalo of the Michigan Employment Security Commission. In the Boston area, 10,000 young people have applied for 2,000 lifeguard, clerk, bathhouse attendant and other such jobs paying $145-$178 a week. Though Atlanta's Six Flags Over Georgia amusement park will provide 3,500 vacation jobs, 70% of the young people in the area are expected to be without work. Chicago experts predict youth unemployment will be higher than at any time since the 1973-75 recession.

Many youngsters, unable to find legitimate work, go underground, into off-the-books jobs or less savory activities. One Boston researcher discovered that half the idle youths he interviewed in a street-corner survey had engaged in some illegal activity, including dope peddling, robbery, pickpocketing and burglary.

Yet in a new report on youth unemployment, Economist David Wise of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government claims young people have an easier time finding jobs than adults and that many are supported by their parents anyway. Says he: "Unemployment immediately after leaving school has virtually no effect on employment three or four years later."

That kind of talk is unlikely to satisfy activists like Jackson, who injected an ominous note into the slogan for last week's rally: "No job--no justice; no justice--no peace." On the other hand, Jackson's kind of talk, hinting of a long, hot summer in urban ghettos, does little to create the jobs that are so badly needed.

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