Three Jobs that Obama Needs to Create to Put Youth to Work, Improve the Effectiveness of the Youth Service System, and Reduce Government Waste on Ineffective Programs

Are the majority of participants in our nation’s employment and training system finding themselves in high wage/high growth jobs? Or are they finding themselves working where they used to work or not working at all? Despite the best efforts of our nation’s job training system, many youth simply find themselves still entangled in the youth labor market—a place characterized by low pay, no benefits, demanding schedules and job requirements that bite significantly into their paltry wages.

“The Forgotten Half—Non-College Bound Youth in America,” a national report on the status of youth employment in our country, states that many large corporations don’t hire youth for career level jobs, even at the entry level position. In fact, studies point out that employers these days are reluctant to hire native born youth, under the age of 25, and who reside within the local community for even the most basic of employment – the fast food position.

In many of my presentations I ask employment and training providers, “are we getting them started just to get them stuck.” Given this chilling bit of reality, it is time for policy makers to explore new ideas on how to reduce the 40% youth unemployment rate among our nation’s high school drop-outs.

While many policy makers still think all they need to do is solve the skills mismatch crisis – just give the youth the skills needed by business and they will get employed –  the opportunity to engage and purposefully employ today’s youth is slipping through the cracks. Rather than thinking outside the box, our political representatives are missing the mark and it’s time to change gears and focus to a new and integrated way of operating.

Would you believe that your youth workforce system is a pathway to opportunity if you were a youth who saw the majority of their peers coming out of the system unemployed or underemployed?

Of course not!

Issues of racism, discrimination, and the failure of the school system are subjects that the workforce development community does not like to talk about.  Although the President’s intent to inspire when telling our drop-outs that when they drop-out of school, they are dropping out on their country. The truth is we dropped the ball on these youth a long time ago.

It is time to put youth to work and stop hoping that the already decimated business community is going to rush to employ those with so many barriers to future economic success. Let’s start by creating a reason for youth to invest in, subscribe to, and complete our programs. Let’s offer guaranteed transitional jobs to all of our program graduates. Give our youth the opportunity to serve us with the skills that we have deemed imperative for them to acquire. Reward them by leveling the playing field and allowing them to take their place on that field rather than watching idly from the sidelines.

Let’s stop asking how do we serve youth and let them serve us where they are needed most – in the communities where they live and play.  An important characteristic for success in working with youth is the ability to communicate. Youth workers must know the language, attitudes and disposition of the target population. These qualities are best obtained if a percentage of youth workers are themselves a part of the local community. We must at all costs connect our youth to opportunities that reach beyond hanging in the streets and afford them the chance to be productive and meaningful contributors to our society.

Here are some recommendations for immediate youth job creations program.

Youth Outreach and Orientation Departments

Every federally funded social service organization should be mandated and funded to institute and support a department of Youth Outreach and Orientation. Here local youth can be trained and employed to address the insidious actions, behaviors and beliefs that misdirect the energy of millions of youth in low-income communities.

Utilizing youth in these departments can be an essential force in reaching at-risk youth at times and places when most educators won’t. They can help get the word out to high risk youth about the availability of education, workforce and social services, as well as correct much of the bad information that currently exists about these services.

Youth Educational Ambassadors

Given the number of youth who are not reading at grade level, we need to stop the idealistic thinking that schools are going to reach them.  I remember trying to recruit one at-risk young man, who told me, “I went to public schools and they kicked me out. The public transportation system doesn’t want to stop on my block. The Public defender is jerking me. So, what makes you think I’m all excited to be in your publicly funded program?”

That is the reality we are dealing with, and it’s time for our government to “wake up and smell the coffee.” We need to get innovative programs to the youth, reach out where they live, in their neighborhoods; on their stoops, and in their living rooms. Youth Educational Ambassadors are the key. By using youth trained to help those reading four or five grades levels below them we can implement a culturally competent curriculum that will effectively connect to those at-risk youth in a way that we have only wished for. What’s more, the effective use of youth to reach others is the best possible promotion a program could hope for.

Youth Program and Policy Improvement Committees.

Many of the nation’s youth educational service programs are on life support and young people are pulling the plug.  To help improve the relevance of youth services to the young people they serve establish youth representation in human services organizations, school boards, and policy organizations.  The key benefit is the utilization of youth popular culture to draw others to the organizations by making them look more youth friendly. Additionally, soliciting youth input in the staff hiring process and evaluation of services ensures a much more effectively run program as it speaks directly to the needs of the youth that will be served.

High wage/high growth jobs are obtainable, just maybe not all in the private sector. Let’s invest in our youth to lead us into a brighter today and a more promising tomorrow.

Solving the Youth Unemployment Problem

 

By Edward DeJesus

As a youth workforce development professional for the past 20 years, I have rolled with the punches, promoting and carrying out the order of the day in the effort of preparing youth for the employment world. First, I was told to emphasize pre-employment work maturity competencies, then focus on high stakes high standard testing.  From there I was prompted to help build an employer demand driven workforce system. And now — Green jobs.  At this stage, I have grown weary of following an uninformed agenda. How is it that those who don’t work in the field can make up these terms for those who do, as if they have a better read on the young people we serve?

Let’s keep it real for a minute. The young people I work with are facing challenges that reach far beyond the realm of pre-employment work maturity training.  How do you hold youth accountable to high standards when they’re dealing with the issues of a substandard living system?  How exactly do you take the hardest to serve, most at-risk youth and turn them into Lockheed Martin’s employee of the month six months later? I may be a lot of things, but magician is not one of those things, and it is that sort of unrealistic thinking that made the employer demand driven workforce system laughable. So now, I can’t help but wonder what miracle they want me to perform with Green Jobs.

Now don’t get me wrong – saving the planet and job creation is a good thing. Many of my colleagues would have me hog-tied and bull-whipped for speaking out against any job creation strategy that would put opportunity in the path of blue collar workers. And I agree. But I think there is something else that we are missing. We’re missing the power and potential of Brown Jobs. What is a Brown Job? Brown Jobs reflect the ultimate in reciprocity. These are the jobs where the unemployed are trained to help the unemployed, the poor are given the opportunity to help the poor, and the undereducated are trained to educate the uneducated.  These are the jobs where those that are forgotten and overlooked become the advocates for those who look exactly like they did once upon a time, with the most important aspect of their job is to make sure that they are not overlooked and undervalued again.

Community service, right? Wrong. Brown jobs are career tracked jobs that are tailor-made for the most disenfranchised.  Do-good students from Ivy League Colleges and Universities looking to spruce up their resumes won’t fit the bill because this type of work requires the ability to relate on a level that goes deeper then something you’ve “read about.”

Why Brown jobs? Simply put, the hard work has to be done by someone and who better than the youth who have lived the struggle? After all, the real battle often takes place in the communities well after the hours of 9 to 5. Who better than youth to fit this bill? I often ask my listening audience: “Are you willing to miss your son’s football game or your daughter’s piano recital to meet with youth leaders at 10:00 pm to organize against the local employer who refuses to hire youth within the community?” Most teachers are ready to pack up shop by 3:00 pm, so who else is going to take on this task?

There are none better than the youth we serve to fill in these gaps. Why? Because they are already there! Any youth worker will tell you that our goal is to make sure that when youth leave our program, our program never leaves them. Let’s put these youth to work in Brown jobs, uplifting their peers, community, and improving the educational and workforce system. The benefits for such an investment will be huge.  The Brown Job Industry would fulfill the following:

•  Sufficient job creation for poor unemployed youth.
• Youth entry-level positions that allow for rapid progression through a combination of experience, education, and on-the job training.
• Long-term benefit within affected communities and the society as a whole.

The only way to effectively reach the youth is with help from the youth.

This is a concept we as youth workers have embraced for several years. It only takes a couple of seconds of observation to see the enormity of the gap in communication between the average middle class educator and the young people they are supposed to assist. Instead of considering the road that has been traveled, many educators sit on their side of the table, judging the young person they see on the other side of the table.  Before properly assessing the situation, acknowledging the challenges that were overcome up to that point, they’d rather declare that they don’t have a chance. They’d rather assume there must be some sort of gang affiliation, or question why they dress or look the way they do.

What they need to say is, “I feel your struggle and I understand your hustle. Let us work together to find a way out of this mess.”

Who understands youth better than youth?

 Though I constantly hear clueless policymakers speak about reducing the drop-out rate, solving the unemployment rate, and getting more youth off the streets and into programs, they tend to get quiet when the question of where all these new teachers and support are coming from. They’re talking a good game, but if you can’t deliver, why waste the breath?

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics is unable to give a straight answer on green jobs creation, they sure know about the growth of human service occupations.  With a 34% increase in the next few years, jobs will be plentiful. The number of social and human service assistants is projected to grow by nearly 34 percent between 2006 and 2016, which is much faster than the average for all occupations. Besides, aren’t we the human service agencies that they are talking about? We are the ones that will need trained culturally competent workers?  I think I got it right?.  My target audience is not the dentists or computer engineers. My presentations are designed for the direct human service organizations or those pretending to be one.  We are the ones who will be creating the jobs, and who better to hire than the young adults we love and transform our educational and human service system?

Simple!

It is my opinion that more youth will find more successful, productive work in the human service system than in the green industry, which may lead to nothing more than moving shrubs and clearing bushes.  The report, 7 Myths about Green Jobs published by the University of Illinois and Case Western University challenges the efficacy of the Green Jobs Model. Programs already have a hard time getting youth off the streets and into the construction labor unions. What makes the Green Industry any different? I say let them work of us.

There’s one caveat. It is our responsibility to make these jobs permanent and incorporate them into the matrix of our human service system. For the past three years, YDRF has pushed Peer Support Workers (PSWs) as an entry level entrée to the workforce development system. Groups of trained and paid youth with intent focus on program and peer development activity should adorn every school, GED class and Job Training program.  The PSW will have a detailed career track to other positions in the organization and within the civil service system.

It should come to us as no surprise that if we keep using traditional measures to select teachers and youth workers, those who fall outside those traditional measures will be discounted and overlooked. Consequently the Ivy League student gets more opportunities to work in the hood than the committed, ex –offender who knows the error of his ways and is committed to making sure no one walks down that path.

If we continue to use these traditional measures for building the human service workforce, we will get the same substandard, lack-luster results we’ve always gotten, and we will deny the opportunity of a new breed of workers to carry the torch to take their peers into the 21^st Century, fight injustice, and advocate for those who are undervalued and overlooked.

The new Brown economy is an economy of service to our fellow humans, the ones who need it most. It is ready and waiting for us to put it in force.  Let’s put those who’ve been there, back there and watch what happens.

Edward DeJesus is a notable thinker in the field of workforce development and education. He is a national speaker, trainer and consultant. He can be reached at www.edwarddejesus.com. reprint permitted with full reference to author.