As the implementation of Obamacare loomed on the horizon, youth unemployment remained at more than 11 percent in the month of September, showing the first signs that uncertainty about President Barack Obama’s healthcare law was going to hurt young Americans.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics report, released on Tuesday, several weeks late due to the government shutdown, revealed that the economy added just 148,000 jobs in the month of September, lower than predicted. And youth unemployment dropped only slightly, according to the youth-focused organization Generation Opportunity, down to 11.2 percent from 11.8 percent in August.
“Another month of more of the same, where young people are really struggling in an economy that still hasn’t recovered, that hasn’t offered any economic prosperity or opportunity to my generation,” Evan Feinberg, president of Generation Opportunity, told Red Alert Politics.
Feinberg pointed to concern about upcoming implementation of Obamacare as part of the reason for the weak September numbers.
“This report does not reflect the government shutdown, but it does reflect the uncertainty surrounding Obamacare,” he said. “And not just the uncertainty surrounding Obamacare, but the actual influence of the law’s provisions that are putting mandates and taxes and requirements on small businesses that are preventing them from hiring young workers.”
The White House’s own data, not included in the BLS report, indicates that the employment situation over the first couple weeks of October is also not good.
“Weekly employment indicators not in today’s report suggest that the labor market situation deteriorated in early October, coinciding with the shutdown and the threat of a possible default,” the White House website outlines.
The first couple weeks of October also coincide with the embarrassingly flawed rollout of Obamacare.
Feinberg told Red Alert that the full implementation of Obamacare over the next few months will continue to make things difficult for young Americans. And the tough employment situation created by a lack of jobs could also contribute to an eventual failure of the Obamacare system as a whole — a system that relies heavily on young, healthy people signing up for coverage through state or federal exchanges.
“This healthcare law is in big trouble,” he said. “And it’s not just the fact that people can’t enroll if they want to, it’s that they don’t want to enroll.”
