Depressing youth employment prospects in Illinois have policymakers admitting that bad economic policies are hurting the young.
The biggest victims of those bad policies, Progress Illinois noted, are racial minorities.
The problem has received renewed focus after a report from the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago described the problem as a new “lost generation.”
In Cook County, the center of Chicago’s population, black millennials do worse than their peers across Illinois and the nation, as well as other major American cities. The average employment-to-population ratio for black 16- to 19-year-olds in the county was 14.8 percent in 2005 and 12.9 percent in 2014. Across the United States, the rate was 24.4 percent and 21.1 percent, respectively, and in Illinois, they were 18.6 percent and 16.2 percent, respectively.
The pattern repeated for 20- to 24-year-olds in the county. Cook County rates were 47.1 percent and 43.6 percent in 2005 and 2014, respectively, but 57.1 percent and 54.6 percent across the United States, and 49.3 percent and 45.2 percent in Illinois, respectively.
White millennials 16- to 19-year-olds fared worse than counterparts in other parts of the country, but white 20- to 24-year-olds fared better than their counterparts by 2014.
The report faulted “forty years of economic decisions by portions of the private sector seeking to be more competitive in the global market place” for high unemployment rates, but overlooked unsound government policies.
A high minimum wage that will hit other states soon, lingering effects of racial segregation, and onerous licensing requirements to legally work have piled on the pain for the state economy. The fall of manufacturing throughout the Midwest exacerbated those pains, but it was also accelerated by high taxes, “some of the highest property taxes in the nation” and “the steepest workers’ compensation costs in the Midwest,” as the Illinois Policy Institute has noted.
Businesses can tolerate state-imposed costs in isolation, but when many onerous taxes and regulations pile on, it can make the cost of hiring young workers, or staying in the state, unbearable.
The sheer number of young, unemployed workers is a wasted opportunity for economic development and a daily struggle for the many millennials trying to gain a foothold in life.
“Chronic and concentrated joblessness affect future wealth generating and employment opportunities and general states of wellbeing,” Director Teresa L. Córdova and Economic Development Planner Matthew D. Wilson noted in the report.
They point to employment subsidy programs, summer employment projects, and training for minority millennials in fast-growing economic sectors as possible areas for improvement.
“Obstacles that prevent access to that training or those jobs need to be removed, which must include criminal justice reform and changes in policies that prevent employment with a criminal record. Corporate, government, and union apprenticeships, internships and mentorships also provide avenues to more permanent employment opportunities,” Córdova and Wilson wrote.
Employment subsidy and summer employment programs can be ineffective due to political favoritism and the short-sightedness of government planners, but common-sense criminal justice reform can yield benefits while upholding public safety.
Until Illinois can channel some economic wisdom from Milton Friedman on the local, county, and state level, Illinoisans will have lagging confidence in the state. For the residents who have the means, they’ve fled the Chicago area for better opportunity, something its most economically vulnerable can’t afford to mimic.
