Opportunities remain scarce for young people after years of debt-fueled government spending

Washington, DC

Generation Opportunity, a national, non-partisan organization advocating for Millennials ages 18-29, is announcing its Millennial Jobs Report for March 2013.

The data is non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) and is specific to 18-29 year olds:

• The youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds specifically for March 2013 is 11.7 percent (NSA). • The youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year old African-Americans for March 2013 is 20.1 percent (NSA); the youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year old Hispanics for March 2013 is 12.6 percent (NSA); and the youth unemployment rate for 18–29 year old women for March 2013 is 10 percent (NSA).

• The declining labor force participation rate has created an additional 1.7 million young adults that are not counted as "unemployed" by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs.

• If the labor force participation rate were factored into the 18-29 youth unemployment calculation, the actual 18-29-unemployment rate would rise to 16.2 percent (NSA).

Evan Feinberg, President of Generation Opportunity and one of the first Millennials to run for Congress, issued the following statement: “March was another lost month for my generation. Young people are finding fewer opportunities and are being saddled with the costs of our country's unsustainable deficits. “Some people will try to blame the laughably small cuts to government spending known as the sequester – but aside from the Post Office, government actually added 9,000 jobs last month. "After years of deficit spending and government meddling in the economy, 1 in 6 of us don’t have a job. Half of us are doing no better than a part-time job. All the while, we are all stuck with a bill that keeps getting bigger. It’s like we’re the last one to leave the bar and everybody else ran out without paying their tab.”