Overview

In the past 25 years, the Nation’s economy has changed dramatically in response to technological advancement and global competition. These changes have profound implications for the labor market, the American worker, and the workplace. The most critical challenge confronted by court-involved youth and personnel who design and implement programs for these youth is to effectively address issues related to hiring and training the youth for the labor market to meet employers’ and industry’s requirements.

Jobs are changing, employer expectations are rising, and work requires higher cognitive skill levels than ever before. The availability of unskilled jobs has diminished significantly because of technology and the availability of cheap, unskilled labor abroad. The industrial and occupational composition of employment, continuous technological changes in the workplace, corporate restructuring and downsizing, growing diversity in the workplace, and the rising number of immigrants to the United States have caused significant changes over the past two decades. International competition has driven U.S. industries to improve quality and to establish stringent new standards of customer service. Employers have responded to economic pressures by downsizing, flattening organizational hierarchies, eliminating layers of middle management, outsourcing, and increasing the use of temporary, contract, and part-time workers. This increased use of personnel supply companies, temporary agencies, and part-time employees has lessened the need for and cost of hiring unqualified full-time workers.

Labor Market Trends

In addition to changes in labor market needs, the quality of labor is also changing. The new workplace is characterized by movement toward efficient production systems, advanced technology applications, and a skilled flexible workforce. Workforce trends indicate that employment growth will continue at a slower pace than in the past 10 years and will be highly concentrated by industry sectors. Nationally, the services and retail trade sectors are expected to account for 16.2 million of the projected new jobs. Business, health, and education services will account for 70 percent of the growth in the service industry sector.¹¹ Local trends may vary from national trends. Appendix B summarizes national employment trends. State and local area employment data are available from State Labor Market Information and State Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (SOICC) contacts; a contact list is provided in appendix C.

These changes in the labor market demand that workers possess a new set of skills, including higher academic attainment; work readiness; generic, high-performance workplace skills; and adaptability. The demand for workers with higher order skills exceeds the supply of recent college graduates. In many parts of the Nation, thousands of jobs that require technical skills, but that do not require a college degree, go unfilled. Employers value employees who are ready to work and have a strong work ethic, positive attitude, drive, and initiative. Work-based learning with employer involvement in curriculum design and job placement can also have significant positive consequences for court-involved youth—from providing appropriate workplace skills to making connections with real employers to providing an income during the learning process. Workforce skills development programs should offer youth services that can address the specialized needs of court-involved youth (e.g., mental health or substance abuse treatment).

The U.S. Secretary of Labor’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) identified five sets of competencies. Together, the competencies constitute the basic skills set that contemporary workers must possess. The competencies are listed below:

	Resources: Identifies, organizes, plans, and allocates resources.
	Interpersonal: Works well with others.
	Information: Acquires and uses information.
	Systems: Understands complex interrelationships.
	Technology: Works with a variety of technologies.

Workers without the required skills increasingly will be relegated to lower paying jobs in less competitive industries and afforded an ever-narrowing range of career options. The state of today’s economy intensifies this problem. Although the economy is robust, it does not provide the stability and job security enjoyed by earlier generations of Americans. Workers can no longer expect to spend their careers with one employer, within the same occupation or industry, or even within the same career field. To remain economically viable, American workers must continue to upgrade their skills and be prepared to adapt to evolving skill demands. They need to become increasingly entrepreneurial, lifelong learners; to anticipate change; and to continue to obtain education and training to compete in the changing job market and economy. Concurrently, as employers continue to outsource work and use independent contractors, more individuals will become part of the contingent workforce.

Labor Market Issues for Youth

While the Nation’s overall unemployment rate reached an all-time low in 1997, the unemployment rate for youth remains high. In October 1997, the adult unemployment rate was 4.7 percent, but the unemployment rate for young workers (19 and under) was 15.3 percent. Although the unemployment rate for African American youth declined significantly between 1992 and 1997, from 42.2 percent to 28.4 percent, it is still twice that of white youth and six times greater than the national average.

In addition to showing higher unemployment rates for youth, statistics indicate that the labor market is relatively unfriendly to young workers in other respects. According to a study that compared young workers between the ages of 17 and 24 with workers over age 25,¹² labor market entry is more difficult for younger workers, the prevalence of part-time jobs is greater, and jobs are more likely to be characterized by low wages. Youth who want full-time work are forced to work part-time over three times more often than adults (7.2 percent versus 2.3 percent). Even when they work full-time, youth are more likely than their adult counterparts to make wages that are below poverty level for a family of three. When taken together, youth experience these labor market problems at a rate that is more than three times greater (48.7 percent versus 15.6 percent) than the rate for adults.

The decline in real earnings, which has continued for more than 20 years, is another factor facing youth. In 1973, the median, real weekly earnings in the United States reached $440 for men and $332 for women,¹³ a post-World War II peak. Since 1973, the constant dollar weekly wages (accounting for inflation) have fallen by more than 31 percent for men and 17 percent for women with full-time jobs. Young workers, especially young men with no postsecondary schooling, have experienced the most severe deterioration in their earning power. The steep decline in earnings has lengthened the time many young adults require to achieve economic independence and form their own households, and it has placed many young adults and their children at risk of poverty. In summary, the data show that compared with adults, young workers experience much higher unemployment levels and significant problems in finding full-time work, and they are much more likely to earn poverty-level wages if they find full-time employment.

The education level of youth is a significant factor in their employability. Education level is correlated with the following:

	Labor market success. Data indicate that individuals with less than 12 years of education have an unemployment rate of 14.8 percent, whereas those with high school degrees or GED’s have an unemployment rate of 10.4 percent. Youth with 13 to 15 years of schooling (1 to 2 years of post-secondary education or training) have an unemployment rate of 6.9 percent, and those with 16 or more years of education (college degree or higher) have an unemployment rate of only 3.9 percent.
	Ability to obtain a full-time job. Although 87 percent of college graduates (16 years of education or more) are employed in full-time jobs, only 36 percent of high school dropouts (less than 12 years of education) are similarly employed.
	Earnings. A comparison of earnings indicates that only 11 percent of high school dropouts are employed in jobs that pay $300 or more per week—a good standard for determining poverty level—whereas 64 percent of college graduates are in jobs that pay more.
	Potential earnings. A worker with a high school diploma or GED can expect to earn nearly $212,000 more than a worker without either credential during his or her working life. An individual with a 4-year college degree can expect to earn $812,000 more than a high school dropout during his or her working life.14

Labor Market Issues for Court-Involved Youth

The ramifications of labor market trends for court-involved youth are even more pronounced than for the general youth population. The young adult (18 to 24 years old) labor force is expected to grow from 18.1 million in 1995 to 20.4 million in 2005.¹⁵ This growth will generate increasing competition for entry-level jobs, with a detrimental impact on court-involved youth. The lack of available jobs that have the potential for high wages and career advancement is a major issue for court-involved youth, especially those with low education and few or no training credentials. In fact, there is a strong association between increased competition, depressed wages, and incarceration rates, especially among school dropouts.¹⁶ To address these circumstances, strategies need to be developed to decrease unemployment and underemployment rates of court-involved youth.

One of the biggest issues confronting policymakers, program implementers, and social service providers is limited data on the employment of court-involved youth. However, some findings of the extensive research that has been conducted on the general population of youth workers may be applicable to court-involved youth.

The most common academic profile of a court-involved youth reveals serious educational deficits. The data indicate that the labor market penalizes these youth for not completing school—with unstable employment and reduced earnings throughout their working lives. In addition, court-involved youth must overcome confidentiality issues or the release of information on their court-involved status; jurisdictional control of their “mobility” (especially for juveniles who are remanded to State-operated residential facilities distant from their home communities); and competition with other youth who are at risk (e.g., youth who are Welfare-to-Work participants, teen parents, and high school dropouts or who possess other at-risk characteristics).

In addition, juvenile justice system personnel who lack knowledge of the labor market can contribute to the lack of responsive treatment and skill development programs for youth. On the workforce development side, employers and personnel who prepare individuals for the workforce may be reluctant to commit resources to court-involved youth. All these factors increase the separation of court-involved youth from the primary labor market.

Community and employer concerns about security and safety are also significant barriers to the employability of court-involved youth. Some employers resist hiring court-involved youth because they fear losing their customer base. This is particularly true of businesses that focus on service and require direct contact between the worker and customer or where work must be performed in customers’ homes (e.g., trade occupations such as plumbing, electricity, renovation, and masonry/tile setting). It is also true in fields where employees are directly involved with customers’ children, as in childcare, or in settings where customers’ personal belongings may not be secured, such as hair salons, medical treatment facilities, hotels, and automotive repair facilities. Employers representing the manufacturing, wholesale distribution, retail, and financial services industries may also resist hiring court-involved youth because of internal security and bonding requirements.

Barriers to Participation in the Labor Market by Court-Involved Youth Lack of basic skills. Low educational attainment. Poor workforce preparation. Poor social skills. Absence of peer and adult role models. Mobility and jurisdictional control. Disjointed treatment/aftercare/service delivery plans. Low expectations by self and others. Negative peer influences. Security/safety risk. Negative perceptions by community/employers.

Issues Related to Residential Programs

There are several inherent aspects of residential programming, in particular, that make it difficult to provide quality job training and employment services to youth residents. These factors are described below.

	The array of problems of youth in residential care. The youth frequently perform below grade level and find it difficult to interact prosocially with others, especially in frustrating and/or stressful situations. These youth typically start with relative deficiencies in both the “hard” basic education skills and the “soft” interpersonal skills that are required to obtain and retain employment. Also, as noted in the first chapter, “Court-Involved Youth: Description of the Target Population,” the age range of residential youth includes 16, the age at which youth in most States can obtain working papers. Therefore, quality residential employment and training programs must provide a range of age-appropriate, work-based learning experiences, both paid and unpaid, that are consistent with child labor laws.
	Geographic isolation of residential facilities. The isolation of many residential facilities makes it logistically difficult either to bring appropriate programming to campus or to transport the youth off campus to where these opportunities exist. In addition, the number of different neighborhoods from which the resident youth are drawn makes it difficult to develop individual training programs tailored to the different labor markets the youth will enter when they return home. Use of small, community-based residential facilities reduces these logistical problems.
	Public safety and risk factors. At the beginning of their stay in a residential facility, youth generally are not permitted to leave the campus at any time. Youth gain this privilege only after making significant progress in their rehabilitative programs, typically during the final 4 months of an average 8-month stay. When youth are allowed off campus, they must be closely supervised by juvenile justice staff. Juvenile justice officials and staff tend to be very risk adverse and take every possible precaution to ensure that the youth who are allowed to leave the campus are both ready for the privilege and closely supervised at all times.
	Performance and perception. Employment and training providers and prospective employers have their own set of concerns that extend beyond the issue of public safety. As a result, they are sometimes hesitant to engage the juvenile justice system and to work with youth, even when the youth are carefully screened and well supervised. Employment and training providers are increasingly paid under “performance” contracts that reimburse them for placing their clients in jobs. Because residential placements are transitional, working with confined youth may not be a smart business decision for employment and training providers. The negative connotations that accompany the label “juvenile offender” may also discourage potential employers from hiring residents. A solution could be to phase in training while youth are in residence and during reentry.

Reasons for Failure For a range of reasons, workforce preparation programs, when they do exist in juvenile justice systems, often fail to effectively collaborate with the labor market. In many cases, existing worker preparation programs are not based on the realities of the labor markets within the youth’s State, region, or local community. In other cases, the juvenile justice system’s limited experience and knowledge of labor market requirements may limit court-involved youth’s understanding of employer expectations. External barriers, such as public opinion, age, and the lure of illegal “jobs,” contribute to the difficulty of juvenile justice workers engaging court-involved youth in labor market activities. In addition, some juvenile justice programs do not take advantage of opportunities to reconcile “mandatory treatment” (e.g., academic programming, substance abuse treatment, and aggression reduction therapy) with workforce preparation and community readjustment requirements or do not have adequate program infrastructure to hold youth accountable through monitoring, counseling, and assistance to employers. Finally, because of scarce resources, juvenile justice systems often cannot afford to implement a cohesive marketing strategy targeted to economic development and workforce preparation programs. Such a strategy could educate employers and consumers about court-involved youth as prospective players in the labor market and as contributing members to the economy and society.

Summary

While there may be no “quick fix” strategy, a longer term sustained strategy that involves principles such as local market surveys, employer involvement, transition services linked to juveniles’ risks and needs, progressive education, and social and vocational skill attainment may be effective. Policymakers and program implementers should be aware of the constantly changing local labor market requirements and supply needs. National data and trends may not reflect the unique circumstances of a local community, and they may not result in responsive local program development. All too often, occupations that are in decline at the national level offer good opportunities in select local labor markets, or skills that are in demand nationally may not be needed in all labor markets. Policymakers should know the local labor market and focus on the most promising jobs within that labor market to provide career-building opportunities and, ultimately, high-wage jobs. These factors make it imperative for the juvenile justice, social service, and workforce development systems to work together to create and implement strategies that develop social and work skills and provide adequate supervision to protect community safety.