Latino Millennial Males More Likely Underemployed Than Whites Despite More Work Experience
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the start of 2014 provided four million job openings, but there were 10.2 million job seekers. Young workers face "steeper" competition in the job market against older workers because they have less work experience.
The younger population between 16 and 30 years of age, or millennials, are encountering a higher unemployment rate than the overall workforce, the National Council of La Raza's Catherine Singley Harvey said. Among millenials, Latino men risk further problems with employment opportunities. According to Harvey, young Latino men have more work experience than their peers but higher rates of unemployment and underemployment than white young men.
Based on information from the 2012 American Community Survey, the NCLR calculated a total of unemployed Latino males ranged in the double digits. Latino males ages 16-19 have an unemployment rate of 34 percent, while 20- to 25-year-olds represented 15 percent, and 26-30 years garnered 10 percent. In comparison to White males between 16 and 30 years old were unemployed, they rated less, notably 10 percentage points between the 16 and 19 year old group. Among the Black community, the figures were worse compared to Latinos.
"Unemployment is an imperfect measure of economic well-being because it fails to count workers who are not employed at their full potential or who are detached from the labor market but still able to work," Harvey said. "It is useful, therefore, to measure underemployment, which includes individuals who are out of work, working part time but prefer full-time work, or gave up searching for a job but are still available to work."
The NCLR noted 41.9 percent of Latinos between the ages of 17 and 20 with only a high school degree are underemployed. For whites, the figure is 36.8 percent. Latinos with a bachelor's degree between the ages of 21 and 24 represented 16.3 percent of the underemployment rate, narrowly ahead of the equivalent White demographic, which represented 15.8 percent of the underemployment rate.
"Latino underemployment is caused in large part by involuntary part-time work. Part-time work is less likely to offer some of the major components of a good-quality job, including higher wages, health and retirement plans, and paid leave," Harvey said.
Despite the higher underemployment rates compared to Whites, Latino males, across all ages, showed more average work experience. Particularly among 20-25 year olds, Latinos averaged 4.30 years of work experience than the 3.31 years for Whites. Millennials ages 26-30 accrued an average of 10.1 years of work experience, ahead of 9.38 by Blacks and 8.16 percent from Whites.
Harvey noted, "Approximately 85 [percent] of employed Latino men ages 26-30 work full time, which is comparable to the share of White men ages 26-30 working full time. On the surface, these relatively high rates of full-time work among employed Latino male millennials should be reassuring. However, recall that involuntary part-time work-part-time employment of individuals who would rather be employed full time-is a major driver of Latino underemployment and leaves workers less economically secure."
As Latin Post reported, the overall Latino unemployment rate increased to 7.8 percent in June, an increase of 0.1 percent from May. In total, 25.4 million is the sum of the civilian labor force, or the overall figure of employed and unemployed Latinos in the U.S.
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