Unemployment Rate At 7.9 Percent, Young Millennials Suffer Most During Recession

The unemployment rate in America is now 7.9 percent, up from 7.8 percent in December of 2012. Millennials, or those who are between the ages of 18 to 29, are suffering the worst during this Great Recession.

According to the Huffington Post, the overall unemployment rate rose to 79 percent nationwide. But the unemployment rate for Millennials is now 13.1 percent, which is up from the 12.8 percent high seen in June of 2012. Even half of all current college graduates are underemployed. As previously reported by The Inquisitr, it’s numbers like these that have Millennials being more stressed than all prior generations.

The good news about the unemployment rate is that the short-term unemployment rate, which covers unemployment for six months and less, is now 4.9 percent of the United States labor force, up only 0.7 percent from its 2001 to 2007 average. The bad news, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek calculation based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, is that the long-term unemployment rate is precisely triple its 2001 to 2007 average. The ugly news is that the long-term unemployed make up 38 percent of all workers without jobs, double the average share and just a few notches down from the 2010/2011 peak of 45 percent.

Forbes suggests there are two options for government. One is to “cut back on the length of time someone can claim unemployment. … The other is to especially create jobs only and exclusively for those long term unemployed.” Other ideas would include giving tax break incentives to businesses hiring the long-term unemployed. Then, of course, the other is to create government policies that do not punish small businesses during a recession.

Forbes also explains one of the factors influencing the difference between the unemployment rate problem in Europe and America:

“The rationale for welfare-to-work is simple. If you pay people to be inactive, there
will be more inactivity. So you should pay them instead for being active – for either working or training to improve their employability. The evidence for the first proposition is everywhere around us. For example, Europe has a notorious unemployment problem. But if you break down unemployment into shortterm (under a year) and long-term, you find that short-term unemployment is almost the same in Europe as in the U.S. – around four percent of the workforce. But in Europe there are another four percent who have been out of work for over a year, compared with almost none in the United States. The most obvious explanation for this is that in the U.S. unemployment benefits run out after 6 months, while in most of Europe they continue for many years or indefinitely.”

How do you think the unemployment rate problem in America should be handled?