Jobs

Kristi Eaton at Campus Progress wrote a piece this week discussing a Future of Children study finding an increased rate of young people staying at home with their parents.

Today’s typical 22-year-old is living at home longer, is more financially insecure, and is making lower wages than previous generations. These factors contribute to a delay in the start of “adulthood,” says Richard Settersten, a professor of human development and family sciences at Oregon State University and co-author of the study. The study [PDF] notes that leaving home, finding a job, and becoming financially independent was, for a long time, the determination that made someone an adult.

[...]

The economic opportunities for the Baby Boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964, were vast. Settersten notes that the current economic recession is making tasks that were once associated with the start of adulthood more difficult; now young adults are living with their parents longer or returning home later. In fact, Millennials are similar to the youth of the G.I. Generation (born 1901-1924) because they are slow to leave home and start families. For today’s young adult, the recession is largely blamed for the delaying of adulthood. In fact, half of Millennials still rely on financial support from their family, while a third of all 18 to 29 year-olds receive help from parents or other family members, according to the Pew Research Center.

Eaton concludes her piece by correctly linking this phenomenon with its root cause: a lack of jobs.

Brandon Griefe at U.S. News and World Report wrote a piece yesterday arguing that the Republicans have an opportunity to make amends with young, Millennial voters given the "genuine fear" created by Democratic spending.

With such a large and active base of young supporters it would appear Democrats have their Republican opponents nearing checkmate. But a closer look at the chessboard reveals neither party is in good strategic position to topple the other’s king.

The Republicans’ problem has been their inability to connect with youth and minorities. Only recently have they begun to deemphasize the socially conservative aspects of their platform that have polarized voters since the culture wars of the 1960s. A recent Pew Research poll found that young adults are “clearly more accepting than older Americans of homosexuality, more inclined to see evolution as the best explanation of human life and…are much less likely to affiliate with any religious tradition.” These and other social issues are not major concerns of young adults, a fact that is slowly being realized as Republicans seek to broaden their voting base.

But Democrats’ recent legislative priorities show they’ve also done a poor job at setting the board up for success. Enormous debt and deficit spending to fund a variety of new programs has created a dire fiscal future that is creating genuine fear among young adults. Then-Sen. Barack Obama said it best in 2006:

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.

The rhetoric of 2006 has not translated into reality come 2010. The failure of leadership now continues under his watch with trillions in new debt obligations. Young adults will not be able to ignore the red ink that fills the nation’s ledger forever. Unless Democrats act quickly to reverse the growth of the government’s deficit they will poison the well of Millennial support that carried them to historic victories in 2008.

Griefe's analysis is faulty and disingenuous for three reasons.

1.) I don't believe I saw anything from Griefe or anyone else about deficit spending when George W. Bush was in the White House. When Bush entered the Oval Office, Bill Clinton handed his administration a surplus. When he left, we were trillions of dollars in debt. Two major tax cuts and two wars did quite a bit of damage:

Obama's stimulus package accounted for only .07/$1.00 of the national debt when he signed it into law. Nearly 90 percent of the debt was created under George W. Bush.

To clean up the mess Bush left, Obama has to spend more.

2.) The message about the national debt does not carry any water with Millennials, especially since they are encountering the worst youth unemployment rate since World War II. Our friend Karlo tackled this conservative talking point last year, aptly comparing someone climbing a hill to one's life-long relationship with government.

Imagine for a moment that you are trying to traverse a hill. The hill represents how much taxes you expect to pay over your lifetime. One end of the hill is the start (the beginning of your life), the top of the hill is middle-age, and the other end of the hill is, well, six-feet-under. At both ends of the hill, you pay relatively little in taxes, and the top of the hill is when you pay the most in taxes. This is what tax-paying looks like throughout the course of one's life. For some generations, traversing this hill was made easier (but not faster), because the government helped invest in the well-being of the tax-payer very early on in life.

This is not the case with Millennials. The rising cost (PDF) of college and beyond has not resulted in a proportionate increase in services or resources. When you place this fact of rising costs into the context of rising college attendance, the effect is magnified. The share of young people that have attended college has increased 21 percentage points from the 1970s to the present (PDF, pg. 5). What's more is the fact young people with post-graduate degrees on are on the rise, too. What all this amounts to is a more difficult (but not slower) journey over the hill. It's almost as if Millennials have to carry a heavy backpack (read: student debt) and still keep pace with everyone else. Now add to that the fact that the end of the hill for Millennials is much farther away than it is for previous generations due to longer life expectancy.

In addition to this, Millennials themselves tell National Journal that they think Obama's spending has been a good thing.

A plurality of Millennials say they believe that the president's agenda will increase rather than diminish opportunities for their generation (41 percent to 27 percent). More respondents say that his policies averted an even worse economic crisis (44 percent) than believe that Obama ran up the national debt without doing much good (36 percent). By 46 percent to 31 percent, they also say that the comprehensive health care reform bill Obama recently signed into law is a good thing for the country. Just one-fourth believe that the country is worse off because of the president's policies; the rest feel that his efforts have significantly improved conditions (16 percent) or are beginning to move the nation in the right direction, even if they haven't yet produced major gains (43 percent).

Given the toxic economy the Bush policies gave Millennials as they have come of age, making the figurative hill even steeper, the government must invest in the youngest generation to ensure they have a chance of getting over the top, and thankfully, it is.

3.) Griefe comically cites a list of GOPers including Rand Paul and Bob McDonnell as smartly handling social issues in order to keep the focus on the fiscal matters at hand.

This is pretty simple.

Rand Paul doesn't think the 1964 Civil Rights Act should have passed.

Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia issues a proclamation for Confederate History Month in the commonwealth, failing to mention trafficking of human beings and the consequential brutal decades of Jim Crow.

I'm not sure whether Griefe had a brain lapse here or what. Griefe is right that if the GOP can't get social issues right, they won't have any shot at Millennials period. Justin Miller at The Atlantic notes this, describing Millennials as the generation least tolerant of racism. The list of Republicans Griefe provides, though, is laughable. Their clumsy navigation of social issues has provided Democrats with several opportunities to beat back any Republican momentum.

The generational theft argument sounds good, but it doesn't play with young people. It plays even less with Millennials when it's shrouded in social issues.

Nice effort. Back to the drawing board.

What else is new, right?

NPR covers the continued rise of unemployment for 16-19 year olds, especially among African-American teens.

On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the while the country gained 162,000 jobs in March, the overall unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.7 percent. And it's much tougher for teenagers; The jobless rate for those between ages 16 and 19 rose to 26.1 percent. For African-American teens, it's even worse: That rate stands at 41.1 percent.

"They are competing with people who have experience, and they simply don't have it," says Deborah Shore, founder of Sasha Bruce Youthwork, a group that provides housing and workforce training to homeless kids in Washington, D.C. "It's the worst unemployment for teens ever."

The longer they go without work experience, the harder it will be for them to find jobs in the future, she says.

Unfortunately, the teen job market is one of the last indicators of a healthy economy, with many white youth finding jobs before the African-American demographic. Because of racial discrimination, a lack of resources, and fewer connections, African-American youth are one of the most disadvantaged groups of job seekers.

One way to assist these young people is by passing legislation with comprehensive youth programs and public works projects included.

There is at least one proposal before the House that would devote $8 billion to year-round youth training and employment. Other proposals in the Senate have been blocked, although congressional staffers supportive of such measures believe Congress may still pass funding for youth programs through an amendment to other, broader jobs bills.

However, as the article points out, summer vacation is quickly approaching. Will our representatives act in enough time?

It's important to remember that while changing the way college students finance their education is important, there are less privileged youth out there who want to get to work but are devoid of opportunities. What are we doing to help them?

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.

The Obama administration celebrated the anniversary of the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or economic stimulus, by pointing out the gradual recovery of the United States economy has resulted in “saving or creating two million jobs.” But young Americans continue to bear the brunt of what is still America’s worst recession since the Great Depression.

From December 2008 to December 2009, the employment of 16-24 year olds in the U.S. fell by 1.78 million, or a third of the total estimated drop in employment of 5.4 million. Only 41% of Millennials are working full time, a drop of 9 percentage points in the last few years, even as the proportion of older workers employed full time remained fairly stable.

The experience with hard times of Millennials, born 1982-2003, is one of the main reasons why they strongly support the classic liberal solution of effective government intervention in the economy. Recent Pew research, for example, indicates, that far more than older generations, a large majority of Millennials (71%) agrees that the government should guarantee that every citizen has enough to eat and a place to sleep. Millennials are also the only generation in which a majority (54%) disagrees with the contention that if something is run by the government it is usually inefficient and wasteful and a plurality (49%) rejects the belief that the federal government controls too much of our daily lives.

A recent study by UCLA professor Paola Giuliano, and her colleague Antonio Spilimbergo, clearly documents the impact of recessions on people who are between 18 and 25, “during which most beliefs on how society and the economy work are formed.” Their research found that individuals who experienced recessions much milder than our current Great Recession during these formative years believe that “luck rather than effort is the most important driver of individual success, support more government redistribution, and have less confidence in institutions.” Other research shows that people who think luck is the primary driver of success are more willing to increase taxes to pay for a more activist government. Giuliano and Spilimbergo’s findings support the observation that lies at the heart of William Strauss and Neil Howe’s generational cycle theory, namely that the

“values, attitudes and world-views” acquired during this period of early socialization “become fixed within individuals and are resistant to change.”

The research of Giuliano and Spilimbergo also suggests that the Millennial Generation’s economic liberalism comes with a healthy dose of skepticism about the ability of institutions to help them meet their profound economic challenge. To fully restore Millennial confidence, government will need to take effective action to deal with the economy and reaffirm America’s tradition of economic mobility and rising middle class incomes. Beyond whatever short-term benefits President Obama’s stimulus program has provided, longer term more structural changes in the economy will need be made — starting with education.

Higher education remains an important antidote to low wage employment in such economic circumstances, but only if students complete their chosen field of study. Yale economist Lisa Kahn has found that “the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large, negative and persistent,” resulting in lower wages, in less prestigious jobs for extensive periods of time. Her research suggests that even college graduates fortunate enough to get a job still suffer a 6 to 7 percent initial loss in income for every one percent drop in employment. Even though the differential diminishes over time, her research found such unlucky graduates still experiencing a statistically significant 2.5% loss of wages fifteen years later.

Even so, those who get a four year college degree earn on average 35% more than those who leave college without getting a degree. Getting one or two years of post-secondary education and receiving an associate’s degree from a community college or a certificate from a career college also boosts wages above what they would have been without such a degree. One Florida study found that holders of certificates in particular occupations such as health care or IT earned 27% more than those who attended, but failed to complete, college. Associate degree holders earned 8% more than those who had no post-secondary education.

One major reason students aren’t able to get a degree or certificate is that three-fourths of associate degree or certificate seekers end up working to help cover their education and living costs. Meanwhile federal support for higher education has failed to keep up with rising costs so that more and more students find themselves financing their education with student loans of one type or another. In Indiana, for instance, 62 percent of those who do manage to graduate carry student loan debt averaging $23,264 per student. The loan burden in that state is even higher for graduates of for-profit, private colleges who leave school with an average debt burden of $32,650.

Increasing Pell Grant funding and the value of college tuition tax deductions are two steps government could take to address this problem. Reforming the student loan program to eliminate subsidies to banks as President Obama has advocated, and including student loans under any consumer protection agency that might be created as part of financial regulatory reform would also help address this problem that would fit with Millennial’s liberal perspectives.

The other major reason students fail to complete their post-secondary education is the inadequate preparation for college, especially in math and science, they receive in high school. This is something that parents of Millennials will tolerate no longer. As Neil Howe points out,

"when these Gen-X "security moms" and "committed dads" are fully roused, they can be even more attached, protective and interventionist than Boomer [parents] ever were. . .They will juggle schedules to monitor their kids' activities in person. . . [and] will quickly switch their kids into - or take them out of - any situation according to their assessment of their youngsters' interests."

These “stealth-fighter parents” have already begun to move one of the largest and most consistently poorly performing school districts in the country, Los Angeles Unified, forcing the district to grant them more say in school curriculum and governance. Their success led California’s usually dysfunctional legislature to pass a “parent trigger” law empowering a majority of parents in a demonstrably failing school attendance area to fire the principal and half the teachers as part of a turnaround initiative. Congress should incorporate this very interventionist idea into its reauthorization of the framework federal education law when it comes up for renewal this year. It should also expand funding for the Obama administration’s innovative Race to the Top initiative, which rewards schools that improve student learning performance rather than simply subsidizing mediocrity.

All of these ideas will be resisted by those who believe that individual success is solely based upon effort and initiative and don’t believe in the efficacy of government efforts to revive the economy. Others with a stake in the status quo will argue against some of these ideas. But Millennials, whose lifetime of liberal economic beliefs have been forged by their experience with the Great Recession, will resist entreaties from those who offer only laissez faire economic policies or who try to delay dealing with these problems. They want government to act quickly and effectively, before they and their siblings are doomed to never enjoy the American Dream.

Crossposted with permission from NewGeography

The March issue of the Atlantic Monthly has an extensive piece on the impact of the country's joblessness on the Millennial Generation which has been one of the most effected in this country with an unemployment rate nearly twice the national average.

Not surprisingly it paints a pretty bleak picture and will "likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults."

Nobel Prize winning economist Edmund Phelps argues that the last several years of "prosperity" were a faux financial security based solely on unsustainable industries like home construction and the financial institutions that provided loans for them etc. As a result we are not merely seeing the result of the collapse of those industries we're also seeing the impact of our economic recession on top of that.

Phelps says that even in the event we are able to develop new industry, innovate like crazy, and complete "recovery" we're still in a pickle because the Millennial Generation is so big we'll have so many new people entering the workforce every year it'll be hard to sustain. He rejiggers an unemployment rate near 6.5 to 7.5% as being the "new normal" as we move forward.

"It’s likely, then, that for the next several years or more, the jobs environment will more closely resemble today’s environment than that of 2006 or 2007—or for that matter, the environment to which we were accustomed for a generation."

The piece goes on to examine Millennial unemployment specifically - saying that it is so rampant that the once stigma of joblessness has now evolved into an accepted norm. It even suggests that it happened at the best time for Millennials because the great-recession hit before many of them had mortgages or started families.

There are perks but there is also a debilitating blow-back

"Lisa Kahn, an economist at Yale, has studied the impact of recessions on the lifetime earnings of young workers. In one recent study, she followed the career paths of white men who graduated from college between 1979 and 1989. She found that, all else equal, for every one-percentage-point increase in the national unemployment rate, the starting income of new graduates fell by as much as 7 percent; the unluckiest graduates of the decade, who emerged into the teeth of the 1981–82 recession, made roughly 25 percent less in their first year than graduates who stepped into boom times.

But what’s truly remarkable is the persistence of the earnings gap. Five, 10, 15 years after graduation, after untold promotions and career changes spanning booms and busts, the unlucky graduates never closed the gap. Seventeen years after graduation, those who had entered the workforce during inhospitable times were still earning 10 percent less on average than those who had emerged into a more bountiful climate. When you add up all the earnings losses over the years, Kahn says, it’s as if the lucky graduates had been given a gift of about $100,000, adjusted for inflation, immediately upon graduation—or, alternatively, as if the unlucky ones had been saddled with a debt of the same size."

Its enough to incite a panic attack. The article quotes recent data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers who shows a 21% decline in job offers to college grads last year. The worst part is that it's going down again this year another 7%.

They go on to talk about the new org JobNob who aimed to connect recent college graduates for unpaid internships with new start-up companies in the Bay Area. The first event they had over 300 people attend, many in their mid to late 20's and 30's with tons of experience and multiple degrees from Stanford, Berkeley, and Harvard all desperate for jobs. New college grads couldn't compete.

"When experienced workers holding prestigious degrees are taking unpaid internships, not much is left for newly minted B.A.s. Yet if those same B.A.s don’t find purchase in the job market, they’ll soon have to compete with a fresh class of graduates—ones without white space on their résumé to explain. This is a tough squeeze to escape, and it only gets tighter over time."

This might also be the right time to mention that the average student exiting college is saddled with debt of over $23,000.

If that isn't frightening enough, the mental effects of young people who suffer a prolonged state of unemployment are staggering. The piece quotes the stereotype of youth being so flexible and adaptable to fluctuation in job security. But the reality is far worse.

"Examining national longitudinal data, Mossakowski has found that people who were unemployed for long periods in their teens or early 20s are far more likely to develop a habit of heavy drinking (five or more drinks in one sitting) by the time they approach middle age. They are also more likely to develop depressive symptoms. Prior drinking behavior and psychological history do not explain these problems—they result from unemployment itself. And the problems are not limited to those who never find steady work; they show up quite strongly as well in people who are later working regularly."

Decades after the Great Depression a study was done on men who suffered joblessness in the 1930's. They found these men "came across . . .as "beaten and withdrawn—lacking ambition, direction, confidence in themselves." Further unhealthy habits can develop from youth left in prolonged unemployment. Increased stress and the results from fewer financial resources, they say, can endure for a lifetime. The same could be said for the lack of health care for those left unemployed for long periods of time, and in the event of a tragic condition or accident those youth can be financially enervated into bankruptcy.

"Journalists and academics have thrown various labels at today’s young adults, hoping one might stick—Generation Y, Generation Next, the Net Generation, the Millennials, the Echo Boomers. All of these efforts contain an element of folly; the diversity of character within a generation is always and infinitely larger than the gap between generations. Still, the cultural and economic environment in which each generation is incubated clearly matters. It is no coincidence that the members of Generation X—painted as cynical, apathetic slackers—first emerged into the workforce in the weak job market of the early-to-mid-1980s. Nor is it a coincidence that the early members of Generation Y—labeled as optimistic, rule-following achievers—came of age during the Internet boom of the late 1990s."

Then the good article goes awry when they pull out people like Ron Alsop and Jean Twenge who both claim to be Millennial experts but are so jaded with their own old school philosophy they can't seem to navigate into the future. Twenge refers to youth as "Generation ME" which she bases on social networks being all about YOU. As we've seen the progress of this technology, her uneducated assumptions have been pretty well refuted. Alsop is the one who thinks Millennials are too filled with a sense of entitlement because we were given trophies as children. Despite my debunking of his work, Alsop, has yet to send me my first trophy. These fake experts love to criticize young people for quite simply adapting to the world Boomers have created.

If you indeed read this article rather than me covering it, I urge you to skip over this selection. It consistently brings up points that aren't understood by older generations. Social networks aren't about me they're about "we," its not "entitlement" to expect to be paid a living wage or have flexibility if you're a good employee, and finally this idea that young people turn jobs down because they're not sexy is insane. I have turned jobs down because I couldn't afford to take them unless I worked at Starbucks after work. These people make me furious.

In the end

"...The fact that so many young adults weren’t firmly rooted in the workforce even before the crash is deeply worrying. It means that a very large number of young adults entered the recession already vulnerable to all the ills that joblessness produces over time. It means that for a sizeable proportion of 20- and 30-somethings, the next few years will likely be toxic."

UPDATE: I just got a great email from a friend who said that the most interesting tidbit about the young people it talks about in this article is that regardless of the problems facing them, youth refuse to accept their "lot in life." Rather than entitlement its a sense of hope and optimism that if you don't like what you have you can work within the system to change it. He's right, this is a characteristic that has been tested with focus groups time and time again. Rather than abandon their dreams as their predecessors would have them do, Millennials are poised to instead adapt and evolve in their efforts to shoot for the moon.

Where some of these more negative "generational consultants" see Millennials as inefficient or unable to be managers, decision-makers, or entrepreneurs, my friend points out that it might be because none of them have ever thought it was a tangible goal for them without seeing peers in those roles. This could be primarily because older generations dictate the ways those roles are to function, leaving little room for creativity, innovation, or change.

H/t's: NC & RC

FM's friend Matthew Segal from the Student Association for Voter Empowerment appeared at the President's Job Summit last week, and spoke about his thoughts on youth jobs on CNN this morning.

I was flying today and my ADD needed more than my iPod so I turned to the in-flight magazine where I found a piece by Spirit Magazine editorial director Jay Heinrichs titled Reverse Internships all about how older people have a lot to learn from young people. Also, given the White House's Jobs Summit, I thought a piece on jobs, internships, etc.. might be a good way to get the ball rolling.

The idea came from the writer's daughter who, it turns out, has picked up all sorts of skills having to do with, you guessed it, online media and marketing which has helped her have more of a grasp on how to better utilize the internet to distribute communications and messages. This, the editor decided, was marvelous, because magazines and traditional media have now become "old media."

His solution for any other older person still in the business world but still hasn't figured this out yet, is to begin with interns.

"Sure, kids have much to learn from the elders. In my own business of magazines, for instance, it's nearly impossible to qualify for an editorial job without at least one internship. This is true for most professions. Education only takes a kid so far; after that its a matter of learning by doing. . .

"Instead of hiring young people as interns at our offices, we older types should try interning with them. Kids simply do some things better. Anyone with a 12-year-old knows who solves the family computer problems. The next social trend, the new new tech thing: These are mostly the bailiwick of the young."

Heinrichs' terrific idea part two is to utilize technology to give more internship opportunities to young people through distance internships.

"What if we hired young whizzes as consultants and communicated with them via some youth-friendly technology? (my suggestion: Like the internet). Fly them in at the beginning and end the contract - which, because of the remote nature, could last as long as one year - or, better yet, fly to them. The kids benefit from the experience, and you get cheap work in a field you know nothing about. In other words, while students bear the title of intern, you're the real apprentice."

Condescension and unrealistic salary requirements aside, this is actually something I've been doing with one of my clients for the past year. Our client is in Oklahoma, a pretty rural state, and located in the city's capitol. This shouldn't prevent young people from being able to help out, intern, build their resume, and experience, and be advocates in their own home towns. The difference here is that my distance intern is in high school, not a college graduate.

Which brings me to the unrealistic salary requirements. With an unemployment rate twice the rate of the national average for 18-29 year olds, and the average debt load post-graduation over $20,000, the idea of working for nothing is a fantasy of Mr. Heinrichs' generation. Young people can't afford to work for free.

Further, these ideas aren't new. Newspapers across the country are crumbling with the emergency of new technologies and new media bringing people their news. Papers are clamoring for young people who can come in and introduce these technologies to save them, and the young people that are good at this can generally get a pretty good deal.

While, Mr. Heinrichs is right to emphasis the importance of internships, the usefulness of being an editorial director's intern is falling more into the era of the big box television, I would instead suggest turning to a mainstream blog for experience. Think Talking Points Memo, OpenLeft, Media Matters, etc.. That can get you both the new media experience as well as the connectivity to the blogosphere. Experience is essential, but it has to be in a field that is going places. For the older people who need these skills I think you should consider paying young people what they're worth.

I hadn't really thought about the possibility of creating a WPA-style agency as part of a stimulus program until I read a post about it by Paul Krugman. I also read another blog post about it where a commenter said something along the lines of “Jobs, jobs jobs. The government should create jobs directly, indirectly, ANY way possible!”

I agree. Maybe it is time for another Works Progress Administration style program in the US. I've seen some convincing articles on both sides of the discussion but overall, the WPA worked. It (and other direct job creation and training programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps) created jobs and enhanced our nation by creating numerous public works.

Another example of this type of public option economic stimulus from the new deal - The National Youth Administration, which provided grants for young High School or College students in exchange for work. It also provided vocational training and work for youth no longer in school. These programs trained more than 2 million young people and provided employment for another 2.6 million.

It just feels like our current recovery efforts (in which funds are funneled through contractors and corporations) aren't doing enough to counter the issue Americans are most worried about: jobs. The Recovery Act passed earlier this year is working, in my opinion, but perhaps it could have been better.

If we were going to try something like this, it probably should have been part of the first stimulus. But it's something to keep in mind for the future.

YPNation has announced in a recent release that will host its inaugural event at 8PM Wednesday, Oct. 28 at George Washington University's Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration that will engaging Young Professionals across the nation in a live Webcast on what it says is "America's unsustainable fiscal trajectory."

"Marc, Nicola and Ethan bring three distinct viewpoints to the table," said YPNation President & Publisher Michael Eisenstadt. "They and the rest of our dynamic team of leaders are committed to establishing common ground, building consensus, and finding ways for Young Professionals across the country to work together to solve the very unique challenges and opportunities ahead. YPNation is leading the national conversation among Young Professionals and the event will highlight our commitment to fostering a discussion respectful of diverse opinions."

Ethan Pollack was also one of the panelists at the Better Deal conference talking about how young people shouldn't worry about social security because it will be there for us, better explaining the national debt, and encouraging us not to believe the hype we hear about entitlement programs. One interesting factoid he said is that the Peterson Foundation gives huge grants to organizations the push such hype and fears about the debt and Social Security not being available for youth. He encourages youth to read up and think for yourself.

I will also note that I was the only person in the room that said I believe Social Security would be there for me. My reasoning was in large part due to the AARP lobby's power in Congress... rather than numbers...

Enjoy the short video as well as the discussion at YPNation's forum.