They tell us they want – and desperately need – work. That’s the headline from a panel of six strivers who spoke at a recent symposium at the Chicago Urban League.
The Jan. 30 program kicked off with a report, “Abandoned in their Neighborhoods: Youth Joblessness Amidst the Flight of Industry and Opportunity.” There is a “high correlation” with violence and unemployment, shows the study, commissioned by the Alternative Schools Network and produced by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute.
Teens and young adults are trapped in “a downward and long-term trend of economic abandonment in many of Chicago’s neighborhoods, leaving behind chronic and concentrated conditions of joblessness,” researchers found.
In 2015, about 89 percent of Chicago’s black male teens ages 16 to 19, and 82 percent of Latino teens were out of work. Forty-three percent of black men ages 20 to 24 and 18 percent of Latinos were jobless and out of school.
There was no work, so “they just got wrapped up into the wrong path.”
An antidote to the violence is job readiness and skills training, and mentoring. Don’t let hope die.
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