The Crisis of Unemployment Among Chicago Youth

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s most recent numbers, the unemployment rate in Illinois is 4.6 percent. But if you look at certain segments of the state’s population, the numbers tell a different story. Illinois’s youth are experiencing joblessness at a rate of nearly 70 percent—almost 16 times the statewide average. Chicago’s Cook County is home to the largest share of this demographic, with the situation particularly difficult for the 21,500 16- to 24-year-olds without a high-school diploma who are both out of school and out of work.*

When the figures are broken down by race, it’s clear the hardest hit are African Americans. For instance, 85 percent of 16- to 19-year-old black residents of Chicago are out of work, versus 73.4 percent of whites and 81.5 percent of Latinos. For 20- to 24-year-olds, the comparison between blacks and whites is particularly stark: Sixty percent of blacks are out of work, while only 23.7 percent of whites are. Latinos in this age range fare somewhere in between, with 33 percent unemployed.