Youth, Jobs, and the Future Problems and Prospects

While overall unemployment has declined, the unemployment rate remains nearly twice as high for young people 16 to 19 years of age and nearly three times as high for those aged 20 to 24. Rates of unemployment and underemployment are nearly two to three times higher for Black and Latino youth. In Youth, Jobs, and the Future, Lynn S. Chancer, Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, and Christine Trost have gathered a cast of well-known interdisciplinary scholars to confront the persistent issues of youth unemployment and worsening socio-economic precarity in the United States. The book explores structural and cultural causes of youth unemployment, their ramifications for both native and immigrant youth, and how middle- and working-class youth across diverse races and ethnicities are affected within and outside the legal economy. A needed contribution, this book locates solutions to youth unemployment in economic and political changes as well as changes in cultural attitudes.

Lynn S. Chancer is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Executive Officer of the Sociology Department at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author or co-editor of five volumes including Sadomasochism in Everyday Life (Rutgers University Press, 1992), Reconcilable Differences: Confronting Beauty, Pornography and the Future of Feminism (University of California Press, 1998), High-Profile Crimes: When Legal Cases Become Social Causes (University of Chicago Press, 2005), and (with Beverly Watkins), Gender, Race and Class: An Overview (Blackwell, 2005). Martín Sánchez-Jankowski is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of research are sociology of poverty, social violence, ethnic and racial relations and youth. He is the author of five books and co-editor of two. Christine Trost is Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at the University of California at Berkeley. Trained as a political scientist (PhD Berkeley), she has written journal articles and edited volumes on topics related to political ethics, campaign practices, youth civic and political engagement, and the rise of the Tea Party.