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Teen unemployment sparks outcry
By Joseph Straw, Register Washington Bureau New Haven Register
July 24, 2003
WASHINGTON — With summer employment among American teens at its lowest level since the 1940s, the National League of Cities and its president, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr., are urging Congress to increase levels of federal funding for youth summer jobs.
Under a series of programs dating to the mid-1960s, the federal government has subsidized summer jobs for teens, currently under the Workforce Investment Act.
In 1985, more than 2,300 New Haven teens were employed in jobs funded 90 percent by the U.S. Department of Labor, and in 1992 more than 2,000, according to the city’s Board of Education.
This year, however, the number stands at 462, with 855 city teens on a waiting list.
Experts attribute the trend to relatively static funding levels despite inflation, combined with a 1998 change in the Workforce Investment Act requiring that local agencies provide participants year-round social services, not just jobs.
"If you have a fixed pot of money, you’re serving the same number of kids, but the cost goes up," said Clifford Johnson, head of the NLC’s Institute for Youth, Education and Families.
This summer the teen employment rate stands at 36.7 percent, the lowest level since the Department of Labor began collecting statistics in 1948. In 2000, the level stood at 45.8 percent.
DeStefano — who cleaned the city’s parks as a teen in the late 1960s under the federal Summer Youth Employment Program — argued this week that the government needs to restore work levels among teens.
"Cities just think it makes a lot of sense to support these kids and provide them positive choices, because otherwise they’ll make negative choices," DeStefano said.
In fiscal years 1999 through 2002, funding for Department of Labor youth work and training programs held steady at close to $1.1 billion, said Emily DeRocco, assistant U.S. secretary of labor for employment and training.
However, last year a .65 percent across-the-board cut in discretionary federal programs shaved the youth budget to just under $1 billion, DeRocco said.
"That impacted the amount that went to each state," DeRocco said.
New Haven’s summer jobs program, administered by the Regional Workforce Development Board of Greater New Haven, is funded in part by the federal government, but the majority of federal funding this year — $500,000 — comes from the city’s federally-funded Empowerment Zone. The city chipped in $57,000, and regional businesses and institutions $60,000.
This year’s participants work at 42 sites ranging from the parks department to Unilever’s corporate headquarters in Trumbull, and dozens of city-based nonprofit agencies.
Walter Luckett, a Unilever community relations manager, said that the company does more than keep its seven summer employees busy.
"If they do a real good job we hire them back for summer jobs. Our goal is to make them full-time hires at the end of their college careers," Luckett said.
Chris Reardon, manager of systems development for the Workforce development board, said the program’s benefits go beyond the teens themselves.
"These kids don’t go spend their money on CDs. This money puts food on the table for a lot of these kids’ families," Reardon said.
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