Chicago’s minority millennials hurt most by bad economics: ‘The Lost Generation’

Depressing youth employment prospects in Illinois have policymakers admitting that bad economic policies are hurting the young.

The biggest victims of those bad policies, Progress Illinois noted, are racial minorities.

The problem has received renewed focus after a report from the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago described the problem as a new “lost generation.”

In Cook County, the center of Chicago’s population, black millennials do worse than their peers across Illinois and the nation, as well as other major American cities. The average employment-to-population ratio for black 16- to 19-year-olds in the county was 14.8 percent in 2005 and 12.9 percent in 2014. Across the United States, the rate was 24.4 percent and 21.1 percent, respectively, and in Illinois, they were 18.6 percent and 16.2 percent, respectively.

The pattern repeated for 20- to 24-year-olds in the county. Cook County rates were 47.1 percent and 43.6 percent in 2005 and 2014, respectively, but 57.1 percent and 54.6 percent across the United States, and 49.3 percent and 45.2 percent in Illinois, respectively.