Description:
The number of teens and young adults disconnected from both work and school in the United States fell for the eighth year in a row, from a recession-fueled high of 14.7 percent in 2010 to 11.2 percent in 2018. The Covid-19 pandemic will cause youth disconnection rates to spike dramatically. We estimate that the number of disconnected youth will easily top six million and could swell to almost one-quarter of all young people. With students physically disconnected from schools and unemployment the highest it’s been since the Great Depression, young people with the fewest resources will be left even further behind their peers and face the highest barriers to reconnection. While it is clear that young people of all stripes will suffer, low-income people of color will be the hardest hit.
Despite overall improvements in the youth disconnection rate over the last decade, the gaps between racial and ethnic groups persisted and will be exacerbated by Covid-19. In addition, striking disparities between different geographies within the US remained. Even in economic boom times, vulnerable young people needed far more support, and in the face of Covid-19, their needs have grown.
A Decade Undone: Youth Disconnection in the Age of Coronavirus, written in the months before the pandemic, presents youth disconnection rates for the United States as a whole as well as by gender, race and ethnicity, region, state, metro area, county, and congressional district. For the first time, we also present disconnection rates for each of the country’s roughly 2,400 public use microdata areas (PUMAs), a Census Bureau-defined geography of at least 100,000 people. Using data by PUMA, we introduce a new community typology that highlights the distinct characteristics of the country’s urban, suburban, and rural areas and explores how they affect youth disconnection rates. These pre-coronavirus numbers create a map of vulnerability; they highlight where disconnection rates were already highest and therefore where the situation today is most precarious.
Replies