Jobs for youth implode
By
Caleb T. Maupin
Published Feb 23, 2008 10:10 AM
In the late 1970s the British punk band The Clash wrote and performed
“Groovy Times,” a song about a pitched battle between unemployed
youth and the cops in the Brixton area of London. The jobs the youth depended
on simply didn’t exist any more.
It seems that today the situation is growing very similar for U.S. youth. The
Web site of the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in January unemployment
among young people ages 16-19 rose steeply, from 15 percent a year ago to 18
percent today. (bls.gov) This dramatic increase has gone largely unreported in
the capitalist media.
For many working-class youth, especially those trying to get an education, jobs
in the service industries have been their only way of making some money,
especially with the virtual dismantling of manufacturing in this country.
On Feb. 5, the Institute for Supply Management reported that an index measuring
the service sector of the economy had fallen to its lowest level since 2001,
indicating a general economic slowdown. (New York Times, Feb. 6) This
announcement was seen as so ominous that it caused big drops in the Asian stock
markets that day.
McDonald’s recently announced that sales in its U.S. stores dropped in
December, despite modest profit growth for the quarter. Starbucks, a
corporation that hires many young people to serve coffee, grew by only 1
percent last year, the worst it’s done “in years.”
(businessandmedia.org)
Many service jobs, like supermarket clerks and gas station attendants, are
being eliminated altogether. Self-service is replacing workers, many of them
youth.
They are coming up against what Marxist-Leninists call overproduction. In a
period of economic boom, competition drives the big capitalists to expand the
means of production and at the same time cut wages, to the point where the
volume of goods and services produced far exceeds what workers can afford to
buy—even if they have credit cards. As wages decline and steady factory
jobs are stolen from workers, they cannot afford to eat out, even at McDonalds,
let alone buy an expensive coffee in the morning.
The view that capitalism is a paradise, created in Ayn Rand novels and other
disgusting right-wing propaganda, is becoming a joke to the countless U.S.
youth now under the pressure and strain of being unemployed in an economic
system incapable of compassion.
Some 2 million U.S. workers are now locked away, the majority of them young
people, and most for the victimless crime of selling drugs—something
youth are known to turn to when legal means of getting by are less
available.
But young people are known for their defiance, their will to resist and their
courage against injustice. The recession we face currently could become much
worse than the situation British youth faced at the time of the Brixton
“riots” that The Clash sang about.
As capitalism deteriorates and millions of youth are up against a wall, they
will discover that they have no choice but to stand up, fight back and smash
the system that holds them down.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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