Youth Unemployment Rate in the USA

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Youth Unemployment Rate in the USA
Joblessness is one of the primary problems affecting young people in the United States of America (USA). Despite many parents taking their children to schools, it is obvious that not all these individuals are absorbed by the job market upon graduating. Specifically, many graduates spend more time searching for jobs that are either not available or employers are seeking to hire highly experienced people. Before the coronavirus pandemic, the USA Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicated that the unemployment rate among young people in the USA was plummeting gradually. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this issue, making it more difficult for the youths to get jobs. Some businesses have shut down their operations, and others have retrenched their workforce. In that case, a significant percentage of young people have lost their jobs and those who are graduating find it hard to secure employment. The high unemployment rate among youths is a significant problem that affects the career of many young people in the USA.
The article “Explaining the Decline in the U.S. Employment-to-Population Ratio: A Review of the Evidence” by Katharine Abraham and Melissa Kearney shows that the rate of employment among young and prime-age adults in the USA has been decreasing gradually. In other words, the unemployment rate has been rising among the youths in the USA. The demographic that is significantly affected by this issue is the less-educated males (Abraham and Kearney 585). In particular, various factors have contributed to the rising rate of unemployment among young people in the USA. First, the increase in the importation of affordable electronic products from China has made it hard for technology companies to retain their competitive advantage, hence not offering numerous employment opportunities. As such, these firms are not hiring more people the way they used to do about five decades ago. Second, some large technology corporations, such as Apple Inc., are outsourcing jobs to China, hence denying young Americans career opportunities. Third, the advancement of technology has contributed to the workforce retrenchment done by many companies when they implement electronic systems to manage daily operations and use robots (Abraham and Kearney 598). Machines are gradually replacing humans in the job market, which contributes to the rise in the youth unemployment rate. Other factors causing the rate of unemployment among young people to rise in the USA are the increase in value for human capital and individuals with prison records.
Abraham and Kearney assert that the rate of employment for males between 25 and 54 years started to decrease in the 1970s. When it comes to females in the same age group, their employment rate began to increase in the 1990s (Abraham and Kearney 587). However, the employment trend for these two demographics changed in the early 2000s. From 1999-2018, the employment-to-population ratio decreased from 64.3% to 60.4%. In other words, the unemployment rate rose for both genders, but it was steeper for males (5.3%) than for females (2.5%) (Abraham and Kearney 587). From 2007 to 2009, during the economic...