Broad Recovery, Persistent Inequity: Youth Disconnection in America
LAUNCHED OCTOBER 31, 2024
FULL REPORT | INTERACTIVE TOOL
For a dozen years, we have charted the highs and lows of youth disconnection in America. Over the last decade, we clocked a steady decline in the national youth disconnection rate as the country recovered from the Great Recession, a sharp upward spike in 2020 caused by Covid-19, and a return in 2022 to near-prepandemic levels. The 2022 national youth disconnection rate is 10.9 percent, or 4,343,600 disconnected youth—this rate represents a near-return to the pre-Covid rate of 10.7 percent in 2019. Despite the sharp-but-temporary pandemic-driven uptick in 2020 and 2021, the rate fell 22.7 percent between 2012 and 2022.
Broad Recovery, Persistent Inequity: Youth Disconnection in America is the latest in Measure of America’s series of annual reports on teens and young adults ages 16–24 years who are neither working nor in school, a group referred to as disconnected youth or opportunity youth. The youth disconnection rate is a vital metric of access to opportunity and societal well-being. People acquire skills, credentials, habits, and experiences fundamental to a rewarding, productive, and joyous life during their teens and early twenties. The youth disconnection rate thus tells us which young people in our society have the chance to lay the groundwork for freely chosen, flourishing lives and which groups face serious challenges in the transition to adulthood. Research shows that being disconnected as a young person has long-term consequences; it’s associated with lower earnings, less education, worse health, and even less happiness in later adulthood. Determining who remains disconnected, and why, is vital to identifying strategies and interventions, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This year, four things stand out: first, stubborn gaps continue to separate racial and ethnic groups at the national, state, and metro area levels; second, though girls and young women have lower disconnection rates than boys and young men at the national level, in many places and among certain demographic groups, the female disconnection rate is higher than the male rate, a fact that gets too little attention; third, considerable variation exists among states and metro areas, with rates ranging from below 7 percent in greater Chattanooga, Boston, and Minneapolis-St. Paul to above 16 percent in Memphis, Bakersfield, and the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metro area of Texas; and fourth, places differ sharply in terms of the progress made over the last decade.
Broad Recovery, Persistent Inequity presents 2022 youth disconnection rates for the United States as a whole as well as by gender, race and ethnicity, region, state, metro area, and congressional district. The report also offers recommendations on how to better serve out-of-school and out-of-work young people.
KEY FINDINGS
- National rate: The 2022 youth disconnection rate is 10.9 percent, or 4,343,600 young people.
- Changes in Enrollment and Employment: During the Covid-19 pandemic, the rise in the disconnection rate between 2019 and 2021 was accompanied by a decrease in both educational enrollment and employment. In 2022, as the youth disconnection rate returned to nearly pre-pandemic levels, enrollment and employment are on different trajectories: the increase in employment is the mirror image of the decline in disconnection, even as school enrollment continues to decline at a similar rate to the years during the peak of the pandemic.
- Gender: As in past years, girls and young women at the national level are less likely to be disconnected than boys and young men, 10.6 percent versus 11.2 percent. The size and direction of the gender gap varies by race and ethnicity and by place, however.
- Race and ethnicity: More than one in five Native American teens and young adults are neither working nor in school. The Native American youth disconnection rate is 21.9 percent, the highest of the United States’ six major racial and ethnic groups. Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) teens and young adults have the second-highest disconnection rate, 19.4 percent, or 15,000 young people. NHOPI young people have the largest gender gap in the youth disconnection rate of any racial or ethnic group—16.3 percent for NHOPI boys and young men, compared to 22.7 percent for their female counterparts. The disconnection rate for Black young people is 16.8 percent, or 871,300 young people. About one in five opportunity youth are Black. The Latino youth disconnection rate stands at 12.8 percent, or 1,224,800 young people. As in past years, Latina girls and young women were slightly more likely than their male counterparts to be disconnected, 13.44 percent versus 12.2 percent. The disconnection rate for white teens and young adults is 8.9 percent, the second-lowest rate. White teens and young adults make up the largest absolute number of opportunity youth, 1,797,700 people. Asian teens and young adults have the lowest disconnection rate, 6.2 percent, or 133,200 young people. Rates vary widely by Asian subgroup, however, from a low of 4.8 percent for Korean young people to a high of 17.6 percent for Cambodian young people.
- Regions: The West South Central region, which comprises Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas, has the highest disconnection rate of any region in the United States, 13.1 percent. The New England region has the lowest disconnection rate of all US regions, 8.4 percent; it is home to 6 states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
- States: North Dakota has the lowest youth disconnection rate (4.4 percent), followed by Nebraska (6.4 percent) and Washington, DC (6.9 percent). Louisiana has the highest rate (15.5 percent), followed by Mississippi (15.4 percent) and New Mexico (15.3 percent).
- Metro areas: Chattanooga, TN-GA (6.6 percent), boasts the lowest youth disconnection rate of the 100 most populous metro areas in the country, followed closely by Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington, MN-WI and Boston-Cambridge-Newton MA-NH (both 6.7 percent). The highest youth disconnection rate can be found in McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX (18.5 percent), followed by Bakersfield-Delano, CA (17.2 percent), and Memphis, TN-MS-AR (16.5 percent).
- Congressional districts: Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes which includes state capital Madison and its surrounding suburbs and towns as well as the University of Wisconsin, has the lowest youth disconnection rate, 3.7 percent. Kentucky’s 5th Congressional District, which which encompasses rural Appalachia’s Southeastern Kentucky, is home to the highest youth disconnection rate, 21.1 percent.
For media and all other inquiries, contact us at: contact@measureofamerica.org
A Portrait of Newark
A PORTRAIT OF NEWARK
RELEASED APRIL 24, 2024
FULL REPORT | PRESS RELEASE | DOWNLOAD DATA
A Portrait of Newark paints a picture of well-being and access to opportunity, and the state of youth disconnection in Newark today. The Portrait is an extensive study of well-being and youth disconnection across race, place, and gender throughout Newark’s five wards. The report found that stark variation exists by place and by demographic group—resulting in significant inequalities across Newark.
This report uses the American Human Development Index (HDI) to present how Newark residents are doing on three key dimensions of well-being—a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living. Broken down by race and ethnicity, by gender, and by ward and census tract, the index shows how communities across Newark are faring relative to one another and to the state and country as a whole.
The HDI is expressed on a scale from zero to ten, with ten indicating higher levels of well-being across health, education, and standard of living. Newark as a whole scores 4.10, falling significantly below the score for Essex County, 5.67, and New Jersey as a whole, 6.35. Of the racial and ethnic groups for whom it is possible to calculate an HDI score, Black residents have the lowest HDI score (3.59), and Asians have the highest (6.90), followed by whites (5.70), and Latinos (4.19). In terms of distribution by tract, Tract 16 in the West Ward has the lowest HDI score (1.42) compared to Tract 73 in the East Ward which is the highest-scoring census tract (5.56). In the North Ward, no tract scores below 3.36. Both the South and West Wards have tracts that score below 2.00, evidence of well-being challenges.
The report also provides an in-depth look at youth disconnection in Newark. Disconnected youth are young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither working nor in school. Here in the United States, organizations that work with this population also use the term “opportunity youth.”
The youth disconnection rate in Newark in 2022 is 18.4 percent, or 7,500 young people. This is 7.5 percentage points higher than the national rate (10.9 percent) and nearly double the rate in New Jersey as a whole (9.4 percent).
SELECT FINDINGS:
HEALTH:
- Life expectancy at birth in Newark (77.0 years) is 1.6 years shorter than life expectancy in Essex County and 2.6 years shorter than life expectancy in New Jersey as a whole. Newark women outlive their male counterparts by 7.4 years, on average—larger than the gender gap at the national level, about six years.
- Black residents of Newark have a life expectancy of 71.9 years, about five years less than the Newark average and nearly eight years less than the state average. The life expectancy for Black women is 75.9 years and for Black men, a shockingly low 67.4 years.
EDUCATION:
- The share of Newark adults ages 25 and older who lack a high school diploma (22.1 percent) is more than double the state rate (9.4 percent). State residents are two and one-half times as likely to hold a four-year bachelor’s degree as Newark residents and three times as likely to hold a graduate degree.
- Newark’s Latino residents have the lowest overall levels of educational attainment with more than one in three adults ages 25 and older lacking a high school diploma. Latina women are more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than Latino men (12.7 percent versus 9.3 percent) – yet they earn significantly less.
LIVING STANDARDS:
- Roughly one in four Newark residents live in poverty, more than double the national rate.
- The typical Newark resident earns $33,300 per year, $10,400 less than the Essex County median of $43,700 and $18,200 less than the New Jersey median of $51,500. Among gender and racial and ethnic groups, Latina women earn the least ($23,100), less than half of what the top-earning group, white men, earn ($50,600).
- The median household income for a Newark commuter is more than $91,000, nearly three times higher than the median household income of a Newark resident. Essex County is home to the largest Black-white and Latino-white gaps in median household income among the state’s 21 counties.
YOUTH DISCONNECTION:
- The rate of teens and young adults who are out of school and out of work in Newark is 18.4 percent, much higher than both the national and state rates.
- Black youth make up 43.2 percent of the total youth population in Newark and 54.9 percent of the opportunity youth population. Boys and young men are more likely to be disconnected than girls and young women (18.8 percent versus 16.3 percent), still, Newark’s girls and young women have an unusually high disconnection rate.
- Poverty impacts disconnection significantly: 28.5 percent of impoverished youth are disconnected, versus 14.1 percent of those not in poverty.
- In Newark, young adults who live in housing with broadband have slightly lower rates of disconnection from work and school, 14.3 percent, while those with no internet at home (3,000 youth) have double the rate of disconnection, 28.6 percent.
- The disconnection rate among mothers ages 16–24, 34.8 percent, is much higher than that of young women without children, 15.0 percent. Among the most striking findings of this report is how pervasive poverty is among the city’s young mothers—alarmingly, half of young mothers in Newark live in poverty.
Ensuring an Equitable Recovery: Addressing Covid-19’s Impact on Education
LAUNCHED OCTOBER 3, 2023
FULL REPORT | INTERACTIVE TOOL | MEDIA RELEASE
Between 2010 and 2019, the youth disconnection rate fell 27 percent, driven largely by the steady increase in youth employment in the years following the Great Recession. The number of teens and young adults disconnected from both work and school in the United States was lower than it had been in over a decade. However, this trend was suddenly reversed with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the rate increased a striking 13.1 percent between 2019 and 2021. The 2021 national youth disconnection rate is 12.1 percent, or 4,680,900 disconnected youth—an improvement on the 2020 rate, 12.6 percent, but still falling short of the pre-pandemic rate of 10.7 percent. Covid-19’s harmful and potentially persistent effects on young people cannot be underestimated. The pandemic not only robbed young people of important milestones, experiences, and opportunities, it also reversed a decade of progress in reducing youth disconnection. Now, taking the right steps to meet the needs of communities and individuals experiencing disconnection is critical.
Ensuring an Equitable Recovery: Addressing Covid-19’s Impact on Education is the latest in Measure of America’s series of annual reports on teens and young adults ages 16–24 years who are neither working nor in school, a group referred to as disconnected youth or opportunity youth. The youth disconnection rate is a vital metric of access to opportunity and societal well-being. People acquire skills, credentials, habits, and experiences fundamental to a rewarding, productive, and joyous life during their teens and early twenties. The youth disconnection rate thus tells us which young people in our society have the chance to lay the groundwork for freely chosen, flourishing lives and which groups face serious challenges in the transition to adulthood. Research shows that being disconnected as a young person has long-term consequences; it’s associated with lower earnings, less education, worse health, and even less happiness in later adulthood. Determining who remains disconnected, and why, is vital to identifying strategies and interventions, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Covid-19-fueled learning loss set already vulnerable young people further behind their peers and at risk of being permanently scarred by lost educational opportunities. School enrollment for youth ages 16–24 dropped to 59.3 percent in 2021. Declining enrollment is especially notable for 18–19-year-olds; their 2.6 percent decrease from 2019 to 2021 is unprecedented in our analysis going back to 2006. Employment rates for young adults decreased as well, at roughly double the rate of enrollment, in the aftermath of Covid-19.These sharp losses have worsened the wide and long-standing gap in outcomes between rich and poor districts and, if not successfully addressed, may result in higher rates of high school dropout, fewer students transitioning from high school to postsecondary education, and fewer entry-level workers with the skills needed for many jobs in the coming years.
Another striking finding is that the share of all young people with at least one disability increased sharply between 2019 and 2021. In particular, the cognitive disability rate for young adults ages 16–24 increased 21.8 percent from 2019, far more sharply than it did for other age groups; Covid-19 or Covid-associated mental health challenges are the likely culprit. Though older people are more likely than younger ones to suffer from long Covid, youth are not immune, and young adults have suffered from Covid-era depression more acutely than older cohorts.
Ensuring an Equitable Recovery presents 2021 youth disconnection rates for the United States as a whole as well as by gender, race and ethnicity, region, state, metro area, and Congressional District. The report also offers recommendations on how to better serve out-of-school and out-of-work young people.
KEY FINDINGS
- National rate: The 2021 youth disconnection rate is 12.1 percent, or 4,680,900 young people.
- Disability: In 2019, 6.7 percent of young adults ages 16–24 had a disability; in 2021, 7.8 percent of young adults did: 3,045,000 individuals. Due to the increased share of disability in young adults, an additional 457,400 young adults were disabled in 2021. The cognitive disability rate for young adults in this age group increased 21.8 percent from 2019, far more sharply than it did for other age groups; Covid-19 or Covid-associated mental health challenges are the likely culprits.
- Gender: As in past years, girls and young women at the national level are less likely to be disconnected than boys and young men, 11.5 percent versus 12.6 percent. The size of the gender gap varies by race and ethnicity, however.
- Race and ethnicity: Nearly one in four Native American teens and young adults are neither working nor in school. The Native American youth disconnection rate is 23.4 percent, the highest of the United States’ five major racial and ethnic groups. Black teens and young adults have the second-highest disconnection rate, 18.9 percent, or 966,300 young people. Black young people have the largest gender gap in the youth disconnection rate of any racial or ethnic group—16.4 percent for Black girls and young women, compared to 21.4 percent for their male counterparts. The Latino youth disconnection rate stands at 14.0 percent, or 1,286,200 young people. In past years, Latina girls and young women were slightly more likely than their male counterparts to be disconnected. In 2020, both rates sat at 14.0 percent, but in 2021, the female and male rates have separated again slightly, 14.1 percent versus 13.9 percent. The disconnection rate for white teens and young adults is 9.8 percent, the second-lowest rate. White teens and young adults make up the largest absolute number of disconnected youth, 1,946,500 people. Asian teens and young adults have the lowest disconnection rate, 6.9 percent, or 140,000 young people. Rates vary widely by Asian subgroup and gender, however, from a low of 3.4 percent for Korean girls and young women to a high of 17.6 percent for Hmong boys and young men.
- Regions: The East South Central region, which comprises Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee, has the highest disconnection rate of any region in the United States, 14.2 percent. New England and the West North Central regions are tied for the lowest disconnection rate of all US regions, 8.9 percent. New England, which is home to Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, has the lowest rates for Black (11.3 percent) and Asian (3.2 percent) young people. The West North Central region (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota) has the lowest white youth disconnection rate, 7.6 percent, and the lowest Latino rate, 11.4 percent.
- States: North Dakota has the lowest youth disconnection rate (7.0 percent), followed by Iowa (7.1 percent) and Delaware (7.3 percent). New Mexico has the highest rate (20.5 percent), followed by Louisiana (17.7 percent) and Alaska (16.5 percent).
- Metro areas: Provo-Orem, UT (6.8 percent), boasts the lowest youth disconnection rate of the 100 most populous metro areas in the country, followed by Ogden-Clearfield, UT (also 6.8 percent due to rounding but nonetheless a hair behind Provo-Orem), and Boston-Cambridge-Newton MA-NH (7.0 percent). The highest youth disconnection rate can be found in Memphis, TN-MS-AR (19.9 percent), followed by Stockton, CA (19.8 percent), and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX (19.3 percent).
- Congressional districts: Iowa's 3rd Congressional District, which includes Des Moines and the southwestern portion of the state, has the lowest youth disconnection rate, 5.2 percent. New York’s 15th Congressional District, which includes New York City’s South Bronx as well as western portions of the Bronx, is home to the highest youth disconnection rate, 24.5 percent; it is also the poorest of the country’s 435 Congressional Districts.
For media and all other inquiries, contact us at: contact@measureofamerica.org
Face the Facts: Many Mayors Want Changes to Funding for Conn. Schools to Happen Faster
May 7, 2023 — NBC Connecticut
The Pandemic has Worsened Youth Disconnection, Exacerbated Inequality, Report Finds
April 5, 2022 — Marketplace
A Disrupted Year: How the Arrival of Covid-19 Affected Youth Disconnection
To see the most recent data, check out our interactive tool on youth disconnection.
LAUNCHED MARCH 31, 2022
FULL REPORT | INTERACTIVE TOOL | MEDIA RELEASE| LAUNCH WEBINAR
On the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of teens and young adults disconnected from both work and school in the United States was lower than it had been in over a decade. Between 2010 and 2019, the youth disconnection rate fell 27 percent, driven largely by the steady increase in youth employment in the years following the Great Recession. The 2020 national youth disconnection rate is 12.6 percent, or 4,830,700 disconnected youth—an upward spike that reverses a decade-long trend of falling rates. The rate increase signals a Covid-fueled reversal of the decade-long decline in the share of the country’s young people neither working nor in school. In addition, due to Covid-related data challenges, the report argues that this rate is likely an underestimate of the true extent of disconnection in the first year of the pandemic; in other words, the youth disconnection rate for 2020 is at least this high and very likely higher.
A Disrupted Year: How the Arrival of Covid-19 Affected Youth Disconnection is the latest in Measure of America’s series of annual reports on teens and young adults ages 16–24 years who are neither working nor in school, a group referred to as disconnected youth or opportunity youth. The youth disconnection rate is a vital metric of access to opportunity and societal well-being. People acquire skills, credentials, habits, and experiences fundamental to a rewarding, productive, and joyous life during their teens and early twenties. The youth disconnection rate thus tells us which young people in our society have the chance to lay the groundwork for freely chosen, flourishing lives and which groups face serious challenges in the transition to adulthood. Research shows that being disconnected as a young person has long-term consequences; it’s associated with lower earnings, less education, worse health, and even less happiness in later adulthood. Determining who remains disconnected, and why, is vital to identifying strategies and interventions, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to pose countless health, educational, and economic challenges. The events of 2020 deprived America’s young people of a host of experiences that would have allowed them to build the capabilities required to live flourishing lives as adults. In addition, the burden of the Covid-19 pandemic has fallen disproportionately on low-income communities of color, which are also disproportionately home to the highest rates of youth disconnection.
A Disrupted Year presents 2020 youth disconnection rates for the United States as a whole as well as by gender, race and ethnicity, region, state, metro area, and congressional district. The report also offers recommendations on how to better serve out-of-school and out-of-work young people.
KEY FINDINGS
- National rate: The 2020 youth disconnection rate is 12.6 percent, or 4,830,700 young people.
- Data challenges: The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic severely disrupted the federal statistical collection and curation processes. These disruptions resulted in lower American Community Survey response rates not only from the very groups most likely to be out of school and work, such as low-income, Black, and Latino households, but also during the initial months of the pandemic, when the economy shed literally millions of jobs. Although the Census Bureau took several steps to shore up the 2020 survey data by cross-referencing additional government data sources, the Bureau nonetheless released these data with a host of caveats and urged users to exercise caution when making comparisons to previous years’ data. These caveats suggest that the estimates we provide in this report understate the magnitude of youth disconnection in 2020; we believe that the actual rates, in other words, are at least this high and likely higher. That said, these data are still the most comprehensive and reliable available.
- Gender: As in past years, girls and young women are less likely to be disconnected than boys and young men, 12.1 percent versus 13.2 percent. The size of the gender gap varies by race and ethnicity, however.
- Race and ethnicity: Nearly one in four Native American teens and young adults are neither working nor in school. The Native American youth disconnection rate is 23.4 percent, the highest of the United States’ five major racial and ethnic groups. Black teens and young adults have the second-highest disconnection rate, 19.6 percent, or 982,900 young people. Black young people have the largest gender gap in the youth disconnection rate of any racial or ethnic group—16.6 percent for Black girls and young women, compared to 22.5 percent for their male counterparts. The Latino youth disconnection rate stands at 14.0 percent, or 1,258,700 young people. In past years, Latina girls and young women were slightly more likely than their male counterparts to be disconnected, but in 2020, the male and female rates were the same, 14.0 percent. The disconnection rate for white teens and young adults is 10.6 percent, the second-lowest rate. White teens and young adults make up the largest absolute number of disconnected youth, 2,087,800 people. Asian teens and young adults have the lowest disconnection rate, 7.3 percent, or 156,100 young people. Rates vary widely by Asian subgroup and gender, however, from a low of 4.5 percent for Chinese and Japanese boys and young men to a high of 18.8 percent for Cambodian boys and young men.
- Regions: The West South Central region, which comprises Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas, has the highest disconnection rate of any region in the United States, 14.6 percent. The West North Central region has the lowest disconnection rate of all US regions, 9.9 percent; it is home to seven states: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
- States: Nebraska has the lowest youth disconnection rate (7.8 percent), followed by New Hampshire (8.3 percent) and Minnesota (8.6 percent). New Mexico has the highest rate (19.6 percent), followed by Alaska (19.5 percent) and Arkansas (17.4 percent).
- Metro areas: Provo-Orem, UT (6.9 percent), boasts the lowest youth disconnection rate of the 100 most populous metro areas in the country, followed by San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA (7.0 percent), and Madison, WI (8.2 percent). Although Madison has one of the lowest rates overall, the rate for Black young people in that metro area is very high, 21.2 percent. The highest youth disconnection rate can be found in Albuquerque, NM (19.7 percent), followed by Bakersfield, CA (19.6 percent), and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX (18.8 percent).
- Congressional districts: California’s 52nd congressional district, which includes the bulk of the city of San Diego, has the lowest youth disconnection rate (5.3 percent). Michigan’s 14th congressional district, which includes some of the lowest-income neighborhoods in Detroit, is home to the highest youth disconnection rate, 25.0 percent.
For media and all other inquiries, contact us at: contact@measureofamerica.org
A Decade Undone: 2021 Update
To see the most recent data, check out our interactive tool on youth disconnection.
LAUNCHED JULY 29, 2021
FULL REPORT | INTERACTIVE TOOL | MEDIA RELEASE
A Decade Undone: 2021 Update, a follow-up to last year’s A Decade Undone: Youth Disconnection in the Age of Coronavirus, presents 2019 youth disconnection rates for the United States as a whole as well as by gender, race and ethnicity, region, state, metro area, county, congressional district, and public use microdata area (PUMA). These pre-coronavirus numbers create a map of vulnerability; they highlight where disconnection rates were already highest and therefore where the situation today is most precarious.
The number of teens and young adults disconnected from both work and school in the United States fell for the ninth year in a row, from a recession-fueled high of 14.7 percent in 2010 to 10.7 percent in 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused youth disconnection rates to spike dramatically. We estimate, based on currently available youth unemployment data from the Bureau for Labor Statistics, enrollment and employment data from the Census Current Population Survey, and school closure information, that in May 2020 as many as nine million young people were out of school and out of work, more than twice as many as in 2019. Given the decline in youth unemployment in the second half of 2020, we anticipate that the number for 2020 as a whole will be closer to six million—considerably higher than in the years after the Great Recession. With students physically disconnected from schools and unemployment the highest it’s been since the Great Depression, young people with the fewest resources will be left even further behind their peers and face the highest barriers to reconnection. While it is clear that young people of all stripes will suffer, low-income people of color will be the hardest hit.
In the conclusion to this report, Measure of America identifies thirty “post-pandemic priority counties” where the combination of already-high youth disconnection rates (24 percent and up) and lengthy stretches of virtual-learning education during the 2020–2021 academic year has created an educational emergency. In these counties with high rates of disconnection and school closures, already- and newly-disconnected youth urgently need assistance to close preexisting educational gaps, regain the ground they lost in 2020, reconnect to the education system, and receive the help they need to gain a foothold in the labor market.
KEY FINDINGS
- Nationally: The 2019 youth disconnection rate is 10.7 percent, or one in nine young people, down from 11.2 percent in 2018. The country’s disconnected youth are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty, more than three times as likely to have a disability, more than twice as likely to lack health insurance, and more than twenty times more likely to be institutionalized compared to connected youth. Disconnected youth 21-24 years old are less than half as likely to have a bachelor’s degree as their connected counterparts. Disconnected young women are over four times as likely to be mothers as their connected peers.
- Race and ethnicity: Native American youth had the highest disconnection rate (22.1 percent) of any major racial or ethnic group, followed by Black (16.7 percent), Latino (12.1 percent), white (8.8 percent), and Asian (5.7 percent) young people. Across all these groups, youth disconnection fell from 2018 to 2019.
- Gender: Women had a lower youth disconnection rate (10.3 percent) than men (11.0 percent); however, this gap varied by race and ethnicity. The largest racial gender gap existed between Black young women (13.7 percent) and Black young men (19.5 percent). Native American men’s youth disconnection rate of 23.3 percent was the highest for any race/gender combination.
- Public use microdata areas (PUMAs): PUMAs are areas defined by the US Census Bureau; they have populations of at least 100,000 people. To create these geographies, urban counties are split into many PUMAs (Los Angeles has 69, for example) and sparsely populated rural counties are joined together. The result is places with similarly-sized population groups that allow for apples-to-apples comparisons. The ten best-performing PUMAs can all be found in affluent sections of large cities or in well-to-do suburbs of major metro areas, and all have youth disconnection rates below 3 percent. The ten PUMAs facing the greatest challenges have youth disconnection rates that range from 28.9 percent to 35.0 percent. Two types of communities are found in this group: low-income, majority-minority neighborhoods in large metro areas, and isolated rural areas characterized by long-term, deep poverty.
- States: North Dakota has the lowest youth disconnection rate of any state (6.6 percent) and Alaska has the highest (18.7 percent). Washington D.C. experienced the largest increase in the share of disconnected young people, from 10.7 percent in 2018 to 15.6 percent in 2019. Idaho saw the largest drop in disconnection from 13.1 percent in 2018 to 8.6 percent in 2019, a decrease of 34 percent.
- Metro areas: Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH (6.0 percent) boasts the lowest disconnection rate of any metro area in the country. The highest rate of disconnection can be found in Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC (17.9 percent).
- Counties: Rural counties have by far the highest average rate of youth disconnection, 17.3 percent; suburban counties have the lowest, 9.9 percent. County youth disconnection rates have the greatest range of any unit of geography. Virginia’s Harrisonburg City, a small city, has the lowest rate of youth disconnection in the country (2.2 percent), while the East Carroll Parish in Louisiana has the highest youth disconnection rate (81.0 percent).
- Congressional Districts: Colorado District 2, which includes suburbs north and west of Denver, has the lowest rate (3.8 percent). The congressional district with the highest rate of youth disconnection is District 1 in Nevada (20.7 percent), which includes Las Vegas and surrounding towns.
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