Some charts show what has happened since the unemployment rate bottomed in April of 2023.
The unemployment rate bottomed at 3.4 percent in April of 2023. Young adults have borne all of the increase in the unemployment rate since then.
Unemployment Rate by Age Group – June 2025
- Overall: 4.3 percent
- Age 16-19: 13.9 percent
- Age 20-24: 9.2 percent
- Age 25-34: 4.4 percent
- Age 35-44: 3.5 percent
- Age 45-54: 2.9 percent
- Age 55+: 2.9 percent
Unemployment Rate by Race
Unemployment Rate by Age Group – June 2025
- Overall: 4.3 percent
- White: 3.7 percent
- Black: 7.5 percent
- Hispanic: 5.3 percent
Unemployment Rate vs April 2023
Change in Unemployment Rate by Age Group
Change in Unemployment Rate Since April 2023
- Overall: 0.9 percent
- Age 16-19: 4.5 percent
- Age 20-24: 3.7 percent
- Age 25-34: 0.5 percent
- Age 35-44: 0.5 percent
- Age 45-54: 0.5 percent
- Age 55+: 0.5 percent
- Black: 2.7 percent
- White: 0.6 percent
- Hispanic 0.9 percent
Unemployment Synopsis
Those aged 16-24 and blacks have borne the brunt of the rise in the unemployment rate since it bottomed at 3.4 percent in April of 2023.
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I keep seeing “lazy kids this, lazy kids that” which is the trope that my generation has come to be known by.
Many who came before us were offered things like pensions, more paid holidays, better sick leave, no-cost healthcare provided by their company, more company parties and social events, and more things that we don’t have but are aware were once commonplace. It’s kind of sick to me that my older coworkers have six weeks of vacation (which they rightfully worked for and deserve in my opinion for 30+ years of service) at my company, but the new employee policy states that anyone hired after *date a few years back* is only able to get four weeks max after 25 years. (I thought if I worked just as hard, as my Pappy said, I’d have everything he had!) When companies seem like they just don’t care about the employee anymore and all they care about is stuffing the shareholders pockets, don’t be surprised if younger generations don’t give a crap or have nearly as much motivation. Everyone in my generation acknowledges this and older generations have no shame admitting that things have changed in favor of shareholders and against employees. That’s also why people in my generation have no shame in switching jobs: what is keeping us working at a given place?
Thankfully I have a good career relative to many of my peers but even on a dual income with my wife (no kids yet) it’s still relatively difficult to save up for larger things. I can’t even imagine the financial strain of new college grads who are trying to enter the job market now.
– The unemployment rate bottomed at 3.4 percent in April of 2023. Young adults have borne all of the increase in the unemployment rate since then.
> I get the Data, but other than bringing Race into things, I don’t see a breakdown of Data to make this information very useful, other than General Overview type of stuff. Too bad, as it’s got merit to be much more useful, but a much broader scope is required.
– Unemployment Rate by Age Group – June 2025
> Much better Data if it captured Cities, States, Age and Job Categories for example.
Overall: 4.3 percent
Age 16-19: 13.9 percent >> More Rural Areas? With limited Transportation Options?
Age 20-24: 9.2 percent >> More Rural Areas? Cars too expensive?
Age 25-34: 4.4 percent >> Service Industry? Slowdown?
Age 35-44: 3.5 percent >> Service Industry? Slowdown?
Age 45-54: 2.9 percent >> Career Ending Replacement Jobs?
Age 55+: 2.9 percent >> Primarily Elderly with No Savings and Just S/S?
>> Don’t really know, but thought it might be better and more valuable Data Overall.
– Change in Unemployment Rate Since April 2023.
> ( See Above) Jobs in specific areas disappearing? Why? More Young or Less Old in certain areas? Immigration?
Overall: 0.9 percent
Age 16-19: 4.5 percent
Age 20-24: 3.7 percent
Age 25-34: 0.5 percent
Age 35-44: 0.5 percent
Age 45-54: 0.5 percent
Age 55+: 0.5 percent
Black: 2.7 percent
White: 0.6 percent
Hispanic 0.9 percent
Unemployment Synopsis
– Those aged 16-24 and blacks have borne the brunt of the rise in the unemployment rate since it bottomed at 3.4 percent in April of 2023.
> Again… Why? Education Level, Area they Lived in, Overall Age Brackets, Transportation, Total jobs available Already Taken?
Taco is hoping to spread this issue among ALL age groups in addition to shutting down the government and firing thousands more.
Nobody is shutting the Government down. The Dems are not that stupid. If they are and do so, they will pile on more reasons for Americans not to Vote for them.
Nobody was fired, but rather jobs were moved to the States or Eliminated as no longer required etc. The Government has been hiring.
Young workers, legal Hispanic residents, and Blacks workers paid the price for supporting Biden’s illegal alien diversity policy.
Illegal Immigration definitely played a role, but how big is not known, as they were illegal, so no real records to speak off.
The 16 to 19 and the 20 to 24 unemployment rate is the highest, but they suffer the least.
I would agree, and it sounds awfully similar to when I was young and looking for a job. Had multiple jobs as a reason, but gained tons of experience.
Perhaps one reason I don’t see so many youngsters working, except at the Supermarkets for ex.
Now triple those rates to make it more closer to reality instead of government propaganda.
Truck drivers are probably on the way out:
This is about Aurora’s advances headquartered in Pittsburgh, from the driver’s perspective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQrQrOPmszE
The younger kids who have NO work ethics. Unfortunately many parents haven’t taught their kids the important values and morals in life. They don’t make their kids work for anything. They just hand them smart phones, video games, etc.
This same pattern has happened pretty much every recession since the dawn of Federal unemployment statistics.
It’s entirely normal for a subset of the younger generation to need to learn their work ethic the hard way.
So are you calling for a recession with this data (and others)?
Of course, real GDP was recorded as a negative in 2025 Q1.
But it’s currently estimated for 3.9% for Q3 by GDPNow. And it was revised up to 3.8% growth in Q2 (which is very different from your previous supposition that it could be revised to negative)
I’m not calling anything here.
It’s also notable that historically the “youth unemployment surge” begins before the official start of the prior recessions, often while the available advance GDP reports were still growing.
It might be a leading indictor worth following.
They also learn the Value of hard work, and respect it moving forward. So there is a Plus Side to it.
I think many that have it handed to them, and then don’t work hard, but get bailed out along the way, never learn that very valuable lesson.
Do people reach an age where they just stop hearing themselves talk and become old fogeys?
were the unemployment figures
for that age group always the highest?
a look back through 40 years would
include the age groups reported.
Yes, this is a normal pre-recession pattern.
Somehow, I’m voting on comments before I’ve seen the post.
OpenAI says AI is now approaching expert-level ability at 1,320 tasks across 44 occupations from 9 industries, and exceeds most junior employees.
https://openai.com/index/gdpval/
In other news McDonald’s has the best hamburgers, according to McDonald’s.
OpenAI requires more cash.
How’s your business model work out when OpenAI gets hacked and all your “junior employee” business data is now in your competitors’ hands?
How Walmart plans to prepare America’s largest private workforce for an AI-driven future
https://apnews.com/article/walmart-ceo-mcmillon-ai-workers-154ece8ba303ce6ac8c5030e6f719aa1
Hopefully AI will put Walmart out of business.
I don’t subsist on pure electricity so Walmart will still have a place.
Coincidently:
“Leading computer science professor says ‘everybody’ is struggling to get jobs: ‘Something is happening in the industry’”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/leading-computer-science-professor-says-095502798.html
““Our students typically had five internship offers throughout their first four years of college,” Farid said. “They would graduate with exceedingly high salaries, multiple offers. They had the run of the place. That is not happening today. They’re happy to get one job offer.””
Why are they surprised? They over-built CS departments, and every community college now has a “cybersecurity” certificate program that is essentially worthless.
Now the market is flooded with 4-year CS degree holders.
Supply and demand, McFly!
Number of CS graduates per year has more than doubled since 2014
Let me know if you have ever come across a high school guidance counselor talking about electricians, pipe fitters and HVAC in the past 30 years.
It’s a shame they aren’t.
When I was in high school (late 70s – early 80s) there was essentially 2 tracks. One was science/math/business classes for those planning a post secondary education. The other was all trades classes (auto body, small engine repair, electrical, welding, plumbing etc) for those who planned to either eke out a HS degree or drop out entirely and go into trades work.
When I look back at old high school year books, I don’t recognize half the guys in my year because they were in the trades classes that I never took.
The girls had similar dual tracks with theirs being Home Ec/Restaurant Services/Typing etc.
The guy I have used as an electrician here in Florida just retired….to his house on Lake Tahoe!
Wouldn’t that be equivalent to stating that “since you aren’t smart enough to go to college, have you considered….?”.
During covid, they kept hiring CS graduates hand over fist. Now it’s back to normal, and only some skills are needed.
Consolidation in the software industry was also significant.
Do you think all of the increases in minimum wage froze out the younger workers? Why work around a 16 YO workers schedule when you can just as easily hire an older worker?
This is spot on … and it’s worse. As folks (out west especially) keep bumping the minimum wage … and the cost of automation keeps dropping … that’s a recipe for disaster. With phone apps, kiosks, and self service checkouts … cashiers are much less needed. With flippy and other robotics … cooks are much less needed. The many people who I always see in the grocery store picking up the shopping list for 6 or 8 online orders at a time … will also be easily automatable. So as I keep telling folks, both remaining minimum wage workers in California and the PNW can make $50/hour … the fact that the other 99.9% are now unemployed makes that high minimum wage much less of a concern for business owners.
State by state there’s little correlation between unemployment rate and minimum wage.
Cite? Or are we just to believe your possibly off-the-cuff statement.
You can do what I did. Use AI to plot the states on an x/y field with minimum wage on one axis and unemployment rate on the other. The result is a scattershot mess and doesn’t show any clear trend.
Here, I found a free host so you can see yourself
https://plum-valaree-36.tiiny.site/
I think it was the immigrants… for a while you saw them in the jobs high school kids used to have. Will be interesting to see if the kids reappear.
Shout out to Chik-Fil-A for letting my kid take time off for 3 weeks straight due to athletic tournaments. The pay could be better but the flexibility has been good.
@Wayne – not driven by minimum wage.
This pattern happens repeatedly throughout history, regardless of the minimum wage.
I think you’re probably right that when there’s slack in the labor market, employers retain their more experienced and more reliable workers.
Also, workers with dependents and mortgages are going to be more willing to “do what it takes” to keep their jobs.
How many of these younger folks are just living at home with full parental support?
We have SIX OLDER FRIEND COUPLES with kids at home in their 40’s!
I know that is going on … but that’s a temporary fix. While I praise the Good Lord that both my boys launched well … my generation has coddled their children and now these cute little marxists are looking to get everything for free (the way Mommy and Daddy always took care of them)
Think there is more to it than kids slacking. With the middle class getting pulled higher and lower economy wise times are hard. If your a kid your basically on the low end. Then there is the 30 divorced with kids. On the opposite end aging adults want the kids around. They can no longer afford assisted living.
We’re entering an era of Dickensian poverty.
Good points, and I have several friends, and it appears to be getting more common, that have one of their children, wife and child in the home. They take 70%, and pay for everything, but the house will be there’s.
Not sure about expectations for how long?
How old is ‘older”? What comes around, goes around.
A few weeks back, a guy on Jeopardy who appeared to be in his late 20’s, described himself as a “stay at home son”. [lol]
I agree, and it’s mostly due to expense. It does help the parents pay the mortgage and a decent place to live, but after 27? And free parental insurance goes away, it’s time to move out! No reason not to be saving your ass off in that situation IMO. Have a job with benefits and be on your way to Adult Life! 40 is ridiculous, unless it was a tragedy or illness etc. of some sort, but otherwise get to work, and if it takes 3 jobs so be it. I did for 3 years, with my first child, to make ends meet.