The Consequences of Dropping Out of High School: Joblessness and Jailing

[Coalition, National Jobs for All]

This is an important study of the job experience of high-school drop-outs. Unfortunately, except in the last paragraph [quoted below], the authors make no reference to the major source of the job problem of dropouts and others: our chronic lack of jobs, especially jobs at a livable wage, even for those who have not dropped out. This chronic lack of jobs is the focus of the National Jobs for All Coalition. When jobs are scarce, employers have their choice of employees. It is no surprise that those left behind are the least privileged, by youth, class, minority status or experience. When jobs are abundant and workers scarce, employers are far more likely to provide training for those whose skills are insufficient.

If everyone had a high-school education, it would mean only that the unemployed would have a higher educational level. jz

The Consequences of  Dropping Out of High School: Joblessness and Jailing for High School Dropouts and the High Cost for Taxpayers
 
22% Daily Jailing Rate for Young Black Men Who Drop Out of High School

Prepared By Sum, Khatiwada & McLaughlin Center for Labor Market Studies Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts   October 2009

The economic, social, and moral case for addressing the nation’s existing high school dropout problems was made in a report titled Left Behind in America: The Nation’s Dropout Crisis. This report called upon the U.S. Congress and the Obama Administration to enact legislation to support programs at the local and state level to re-enroll existing high school dropouts to enable them to improve their academic achievement skills, obtain their high school diplomas or their equivalents, and bolster their employability through work experience and training. The nation’s young dropouts experience a wide array of labor market, earnings, social and income problems that exacerbate their ability to transition to careers and stable marriages from their mid-20s onward. This new research paper was prepared to outline the employment, earnings, incarceration, teen and young adult parenting experiences and family incomes of the nation’s young adult high school dropouts and their better educated peers in 2006 to 2008.  
....
In his first speech to the U.S. Congress, President Obama noted that by leaving high school without a diploma dropouts not only quit on themselves but “it is quitting on your country…” It is fair to add that our country’s labor markets also have quit on them, failing to provide the employment and real earnings opportunities to male dropouts it once did especially in the Golden Era from 1947-1973. There is an overwhelming national economic and social justice need to prevent existing high school students from dropping out without earning a diploma and to encourage the re-enrollment and eventual graduation of those dropouts who have already left the school system. In the absence of concerted efforts to bolster their academic
achievement, their formal schooling, their occupational skills, and their cumulative work experience, their immediate and long term labor market prospects are likely to be quite bleak in the U.S. economy even after the end of the current economic recession, which for many of these youth has turned into a labor market depression.

Entire report:
http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/The_Consequences_of_Dropping_Out_of_High_School.pdf

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National Jobs for All Coalition
http://www.njfac.org