High unemployment rate plagues recent high school grads
The aftermath of the Great Recession and ongoing economic troubles are hitting recent high school grads especially hard, according to a new study by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. The study found that only 1 in 4 recent high school grads has a full-time job. The research is based off a survey of 544 people from across the country who graduated between the years of 2006 and 2011.
According to the report, close to 1 in 3 recent high school grads is unemployed. An additional 15 percent of the recent grads are only work part time, but are actively looking for full-time job positions. Those who are working are struggling to make ends meet, with “the annual earnings of those working full time are barely sufficient to keep them out of poverty,” according to a the report’s press release. Worse yet, 70 percent of those working say their current jobs are temporary.
“The vast majority of recent high school graduates who are not attending college have
been left out of the workforce or even job training and frankly are struggling to survive,” said Carl Van Horn, a Rutgers professor, co-author of the study and director of the Heldrich Center, in a press release. “Typically, they are either unemployed entirely or working in part-time, temporary jobs that do not pay them enough to earn even a poverty-level income. To make matters worse, many jobs that do not require a college education are being snapped up by recent college graduates who are also struggling to get a toe-hold in a slow job market.”
Less than 1 in 10 of the respondents say high school prepared them “extremely well” for the job market and 7 in 10 say they will need more education to have a successful career, but say the ability to pay for schooling is a major obstacle to them achieving that goal.
