Slow Economy Affecting Teen Jobs, Too

Trouble In The Teen Job Market Another Indication Of Lackluster Economy

(CBS)  Teenager Sokleang Keo was fortunate to find work this summer, taking orders at a Chinese restaurant in Lynn, Massachusetts.

"You want that with pork fried rice, right," she asks a customer.

With her mother's help, Charlene Fernandez also landed a job in Lynn - as a receptionist - which she feels "very lucky" for.

"There aren't any jobs available," she says.

Both teenagers know how hard it is to get hired right now - just one in three teens will work this summer, reports CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason.

A year ago, 7 million Americans were unemployed. Today, 8.5 million are out of work. And without government hiring, those numbers would be worse.

"When you take the government out of the picture, it's much darker," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "We've been losing jobs since last November - some 600,000.”

Pat Driscoll, who runs Girls, Inc., in Lynn, Mass., says she usually finds jobs for 40 or 50 teenagers every summer. But she's placed just about 25 this year.

"The private sector just isn't hiring right now," she says.

And when companies do hire, they're choosing older workers instead.

"They're taking the jobs even at fast food places," says Driscoll.

A slow motion recession is leading to a steady bleeding of the job market, says economist Ethan Harri.

"Unfortunately, I think it's a long slog ahead for the labor market. I think people are facing a tough job situation for the next year."

When asked if they worry about getting a job after college, both Keo and Fernandez echoed those concerns.

"Yes!" they cried in unison.

Because right now, this economy isn't cooking up jobs in short order.

[gmond]

What slow economy? Didn''t CBS just run a story a week ago about all the happy people spending their stimulus checks?

[alphaa10-2009]

The American Free Market Is Not Free-- 3

Some newer areas are still almost entirely without regulation, and others have scaled back or dropped time-tested and prudent rules. The result in too many cases is the same-- the law of the jungle prevails, and deceit and fraud run rampant. Not only professional market players are hurt, but retirement funds and individual Americans by the millions.

After three decades of such foolishness, promoting the interests of a tiny minority of very wealthy investors, it is time to call the fire department. We need desperately a wise and humane regulation of a market that manifestly is not a force of nature, but a very arbitrary and self-serving convention in the hands of far too few.

Only when the American market serves and protects the investment of all Americans equally will this country realize its promise. Until then, the American free market is not free.

[alphaa10-2009]

The American Free Market Is Not Free-- 2

If the market is not the finger of God but the grubby and self-destructive hand of man, all his faults and ignorant, primitive and selfish impulses are written large across the rest of society.

Market mechanics are not holy writ, nor an abstrusely technical "black box" for economic high priests only, but the politics of power for the sake of profit and more power. Our last 30 years of crime and turbulence in the investment markets offers abundant proof.

Since the GOP call for deregulation in 1980''s and 1990''s, we have endured a series of plagues from withdrawal of regulatory controls and limits on financial and commodities markets. In the "greed is good" decade, we saw insider trading scandals erupt with regularity from the likes of Milken and Boesky. In the 1990''s, the deregulation of banking mutated into Neil Bush (brother of George Bush) and the Silverado scandal, costing taxpayers up to a $1 billion in bailout funding. In the late 1990''s, while the GOP held federal regulatory oversight captive, we saw Enron rear its ugly head, and then collapse a few years into the Bush term, taking investors and retirement funds with it.

(See "The American Free Market Is Not Free-- 3")

[alphaa10-2009]

The American Free Market Is Not Free

The blustering ignorance of free market buffs has been laid bare-- the market does not regulate itself any more than a plundering army, sacking and burning a city, does urban renewal.

Likewise, an economy in recession is a city on fire, and the entire world worries how far and fast it might spread.

Deutsche Bank''s 30-year veteran CEO, Josef Ackermann, said recently he no longer believes in the self-correcting nature of the market.

Until now, it has been an article of faith for true believers the market is an organic, intelligent entity acting in its own interest. Ackermann''s comment has the impact of claiming "the God of Markets is dead".

(See "The American Free Market Is Not Free-- 2")

[whitemale08]

We don''t live under a ''free markets system'' folks

It''s called the ''Federal Reserve System''.

It''s where market principals are not what guides our economy but principals of monopoly that are handed down to us like tablets were handed down to Moses from a cartel of private bankers.

That''s what have folks.

[alphaa10-2009]

whitemale08said, "It''s called the ''Federal Reserve System''... It''s where market principals are not what guides our economy but principals of monopoly that are handed down to us like tablets were handed down to Moses from a cartel of private bankers... That''s what have folks.
---
Perhaps you meant to spell "principals" as "principles", but your point is well taken (in principle).

Nearly absolute control of our economy by thoroughly self-serving banks is nothing new.

When our market principles are dictated by a few principal players, we realize we have the best congress money can buy.

For a very rough outline of our banking system, see--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_the_United_States

Even YouTube has a very lucid presentation of how our banking system needs reform. Follow the entire video essay, Parts 1 through 5. See--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8&feature=related

[jd2408]

CBS already is well aware that the lack of jobs for teens are illegal aliens. That is a fact. You can disagree until you are blue in the face, but it is a fact.

[brianbwb-2009]

''CBS already is well aware that the lack of jobs for teens are illegal aliens. That is a fact. You can disagree until you are blue in the face, but it is a fact.'' Posted by jd2408

Your focus is on the wrong end of the equation, the illegal migrants are here because big business wants to use slave labor, or as close to it as possible.

Americans do want to work, they simply cannot afford to labor at a job that pays barely enough to get to work.

Union busting, "trickle down" economics, and outsourcing jobs to slaves are the culprits here, and that fault lies squarely on the short term greed of business, and the politicians they bribe to let this continue.

[brianbwb-2009]

''CBS already is well aware that the lack of jobs for teens are illegal aliens. That is a fact. You can disagree until you are blue in the face, but it is a fact.'' Posted by jd2408

Your focus is on the wrong end of the equation, the illegal migrants are here because big business wants to use slave labor, or as close to it as possible.

Americans do want to work, they simply cannot afford to labor at a job that pays barely enough to get to work.

Union busting, "trickle down" economics, and outsourcing jobs to slaves are the culprits here, and that fault lies squarely on the short term greed of business, and the politicians they bribe to let this continue.

[brianbwb-2009]

Hey CBS, I only clicked submit once, but my posts are repeated.

Last week, I was unable to post.

Come on IT department, surely you can do better than this.

And also please quit echoing our apostrophes ('') turning them into quotation marks (")

[whiskyrocker]

"Slow Economy" is affecting a lot of lost jobs in this country.(period)

[bennyblack1]

I would like to correct the assumption that the economy is down by qualifying it:

Economy is booming, however, due to the tax evasion, the laundering of drug money due to teenagers and adults alike succombing to the temptation, the conventional capitalist state of economy is suffering. I have nothing against home business, because I am one, however, each American citizen is responsible for reporting that income, and I''m pretty sure as a tax preparer, that 50% of all Americans do not report self-employment income. Therefore, they do not pay taxes on it, so our economy is weakening due to dishonesty, drugs, illegal business transactions (such as prostitution, and the hiring of under-the-table illegal aliens who collect welfare, take 1/2 the wages, and often do not pay rent, electricity or water).

I recently discovered that seemingly harmless illegal aliens are swallowing non-biodegradeable capsules full of various kinds of illegal drugs, including, crack, heroine and PCP. In other words, the "gardener" and his "family" are cargo for $100,000 to $500,000 of illegal drugs. Hence, the drug problem in Killeen, TX where a billion dollars of drugs are found with the drug dealers and arrested, with another billion dollars sitting in the fridge next door in a seemingly vacant house rigged to power the fridge to preserve the illegal products.

You guys had better start putting motion detectors and x-rays up for people to run through before allowing them across the borders.

[wardoglrs]

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin (1802)

"Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. Thomas Jefferson

[wardoglrs]

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin (1802)

"Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. Thomas Jefferson

[wardoglrs]

%u201CWe will have world government whether or not we like it. The only question is whether world government will be achieved by conquest or consent.%u201D
James Paul Warburg (monopoly banker in testimony before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Warburg was an agent of the Rockefeller-JP Morgan-Rothschild banking bloc and son of Paul Warburg, chief architect of the %u201CFederal Reserve%u201D Corporation, an unconstitutional private bank monopoly set up for cartel hegemony. February 17, 1950)

"Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people."
Henry Kissinger (ex U.S. Secretary of State and ongoing agent for the ruling class. Living. Quote 1970)

%u201CThe real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government of the U.S. ever since the days of Andrew Jackson. History depicts Andrew Jackson as the last truly honorable and incorruptible American president.%u201D


President FDR (on Fascist rule in a letter to corporate con man %u201CColonel%u201D Edward M. House, a founder of the Council on Foreign Relations and political fixer for the ruling class. House also handled President Wilson for the foisting of the privately rigged %u201CFederal Reserve%u201D Corp bank monopoly. 11/21/ 1933)

[kennedy7955]

If the teens are having job problems the illegals must be dying for work.