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9486 in the collection
Tough Economy for Young Job Seekers--and Older Ones Too
Ohanian Comment: Buried in this article is the fact that college graduates aren't doing much better than high school graduates when it comes to finding jobs. How many students entered college thinking that, upon graduation, they'd be applying for jobs at WalMart?
ANTHONY Shinholster entered William Penn High School as a freshman in 1999 - when unemployment was at a record low, the stock market was at a record high, and the teenager's new love affair with computers seemed to guarantee a bright future.
This summer, Shinholster received his diploma to the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" - but then the music stopped. He pinned most of his job hopes on one insurance company that was looking at his resume, filled out an application at Radio Shack and fretted about his lack of wheels.
Sitting on plastic slip covers in the twilight of his family's living room in an East Oak Lane rowhouse, Shinholster's voice is tinged with worry. "I need a job," he said. "I can't go the whole summer with no money in my pocket."
Shinholster is part of an overlooked phenomenon - the more than one-third of high school graduates who want a job now and aren't going to college, at least not right away. In a world where timing is everything, their timing couldn't be worse.
Experts say that 2003 is easily shaping up as the worst time for teen job hunters in years. The national teen unemployment rate has been rising steadily every month. It stood at 18.5 percent in May, and 19.3 percent in June - the highest levels since early 1994. A deeper analysis by the Children's Defense Fund said recently that the teen jobless problem is the worst its been in at least 55 years.
And experts say the numbers are worse here in Philadelphia, where joblessness tends to exceed the national averages.
"It definitely is real - the market is not what it was," said Martin Nock of Communities in Schools of Philadelphia, a non-profit network that encourages kids to stay in school. This year, Nock and other activists are finding it tougher than ever to get jobs even for the kids who don't drop out.
While job experts agree that a college degree is more important than ever, the reality is that a sizable number of high school grads still go straight into the work force. Fewer than one in four Americans get a four-year college degree.
Here in Philadelphia, a job at the brewery, the shipyard or a union shop used to be considered a birthright, but those days have gone the way of Connie Mack Stadium and the Pennsylvania Railroad's "Chinese Wall."
In the current economic downturn, which started when the dot-com bubble burst on Wall Street in 2000 and slid faster downhill after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the weight has been bearing down heavily on youth.
In shopping malls and in Center City's spanking new hotels, the few job openings that crop up are going to adults who were displaced from better-paying jobs or to new college grads, not to teenagers. Factory jobs don't exist.
One job-placement officer in the Midwest recently described the outlook for light-industrial semi-skilled workers - once the bread and butter of the Philadelphia work force - as "very, very weak."
The service industry, which fueled much of the jobs boom of the 1990s, isn't picking up the slack as it once did.
"There are problems, but especially in the hospitality industry," said Nock, of Communities in School. "Normally we place kids during the summertime working in the private sector," he said, "but some of our main contractors are saying this year that business is down, and they're just not able to bring in part-time high school students."
If that's not depressing enough, Page Huey of Philadelphia Academies, which runs career-prep programs in the Philadelphia schools, said that the wave of mergers that have taken so many corporate headquarters out of the city over the years has taken its toll on youth-oriented employment programs.
Huey, the program's director of job development, said some firms that used to hire 30 teens are now only hiring 10, and she blamed the local "corporate culture."
The go-go '90s of massive job fairs and importing young employees is really a dim memory at the sprawling King of Prussia Mall, the largest retail center in the Northeast.
Beth Margulis, director of the Retail Skills Center at King of Prussia, said that there are still many jobs at the mall because of its high turnover rate - but it's tougher for teens to get them.
"There's a lot of qualified people but they're not working, so we see them at the mall," Margulis said. "So we're getting a different population of worker."
A brand new survey for the job-search site Monster.com found that 90 percent of new college grads are willing to accept an internship or part-time work during the summer months just to have some form of employment. Wal-Mart just opened a store in Connecticut and received more than 5,000 applications for 300 positions, with experienced adults filling some jobs that traditionally would have gone to younger people.
While new numbers also show that corporate layoffs have finally been declining, it will take some time until the benefits trickle down to high school grads.
Sometimes, an economic slowdown might have less impact on teen workers because the few jobs created tend to be at the lowest wage rates - but experts say that's not happening this time.
Nobody bothered to tell April Schmidt any of this. A star athlete at Frankford High, where she studied in the Philadelphia Academies' special-business program, Schmidt was convinced that through hard work and drive she could avoid the fate of some of her less ambitious teen pals.
"I grew up in Frankford, and I know what it's like out on the street," Schmidt said. When she started her freshman year, the principal told each student to look to her immediate right and left, that at least one of those people wouldn't graduate."
"The guy to the right of me dropped out in the 11th grade, while the guy to the left of me got locked up," she said. That wasn't Schmidt. She did ROTC, played varsity softball and worked part-time in a medical diagnostic clinic. When she graduated last month, she was ready to hit the ground running and take on the world the way she conquered high school.
But it hasn't happened so far.
"I've been looking," said Schmidt, who accepted an $8-an-hour lifeguard position in Bridesburg and now hopes to land a more permanent job in the fall. And as much as she's ready to work, she says she's starting to realize that college pays off. She found out that college grads at the diagnostic center made exactly twice what high school students and graduates made.
Still, she considers herself lucky to have her lifeguard job. "I was just at a graduation party, and five out of the eight were having a hard time getting a job," she said. "The most they can find is a job that pays $5 an hour under the table, and that's not going to get you anywhere."
Like Schmidt, West Oak Lane's Shinholster is starting to realize he can't afford to be so picky about where he takes a job.
During his senior year while he was studying in the business academy at William Penn, he also worked part time at a Center City law firm. He said he'd once thought he might like to work in the law field full time someday, "but then I saw all the paperwork that lawyers have to get done."
Now, Shinholster misses the job at the law firm. He loves working at a computer, but says he'll settle right now for a position in data entry. Like Schmidt, he's thinking more and more about starting college sooner rather than later.
"It's tough," Shinholster said. There was worry in his voice, but not panic.
Not yet.
— William Bunch
Employment outlook grim for HS grads
Philadelphia Daily News
July 14, 2003
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/6298477.htm
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
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