Results from the Youth Bailout

The Kansas City Star has a cool piece that shows off how much of the stimulus that young people got I wanted to list here.

• According to an assessment of the Department of Labor's jobs-for-youth program -- part of the Recovery Act effort last year -- 313,812 young people between the ages of 14 and 24 were employed in summer jobs nationwide.
• About 45,407 were placed in jobs outside the summer months.
• The report said $717 million of the $1.2 billion allocated by the Recovery Act was actually spent on the program.
• Participants were paid an average of $7.75 an hour, working an average of 28 hours a week and earning an average of about $1,500 for the summer.
• Jobs were in public operations such as parks, community centers and federal offices.
• Citing staffing shortages, the analysis said the department's Employment and Training Administration had difficulty processing applications and determining eligibility for the program that was designed to assist low-income young people.
• The assessment also said there was difficulty recruiting private-sector employers to participate in the program as well as difficulty in knowing whether private-sector placements were appropriate.
• Bottom line: The program was a qualified success and generally deemed to be stimulus money well spent.

The piece goes on to say that they think it made a small dent in the massive youth unemployment problem - I'm not entirely certain that this is true - I haven't seen numbers comparing pre and post stimulus numbers. Additionally, this is kind of like putting a tourniquet on to stop the bleeding. You take it off and you're still going to bleed to death. We need an operation that will stop it long-term.