Filling in the Gaps

In college I remember being assigned to watch a documentary predicting the end of the world—brought on by staggering and increasing energy consumption. Were the topic not quite so salient, the film's method for conveying potential environmental calamity—PhD's buttoned neatly into sweater vests, sporting bad hair, and discussing doomsday—could have been laughable. There was one very elementary graph with one line representing oil consumption going up and another for fossil fuel supply dropping off the bottom, each blasting to the edge of the chart and leaving a big, open white space between. The film's message was about that yawning space: we were about to go off a cliff, and without a change, it's the abyss for us.

There's a lot of uncharted territory facing this generation's twenty-somethings. For what it's worth, energy consumption is on the rise, there are limited resources, glaciers are melting, polar bears are dying, and we are only just figuring out how to begin approaching the problem of climate change.

But there are other huge, mountainous problems awaiting this group, and many of them hit far closer to home. Younger workers currently have an unemployment rate more than double that of the general population. In the Great Recession, younger adults are preparing to start their lives, grow into the careers they dreamed of as kids, getting ready to make a difference and contend with our world's most serious challenges (like climate change), and they are met with a gulf between them and opportunity. For many, there just isn't a bridge to cross.

One young person, stalled in their prospects, stuck in a dead end job (if they are lucky) or without work for years (if they're not), is a shame. Millions of young people who don't learn the basic responsibilities of working life, who don't learn the skills they will need later down the line to land work with family-supporting wages... well, this is another one of those potential catastrophes best represented by the graph of mysteries.

I'd rather not find out what happens when a nation forgets about its youngest, and often, most vulnerable workers. It's time for employment programs that approach the inter-dimensionality of our current unemployment crisis. Fortunately, the upcoming Youth Corps Act of 2010 and Public Lands Corps Act are offering tangible solutions to the youth unemployment crisis, potentially giving Corps the resources to train and employ young people. With this sort of legislative action, Corps can better do what they do best, fill in the gaps for young people and teach them how to sensibly drive toward a future where they can grow professionally into careers that prepare them to deal with their communities' (and the world's) greatest challenges.