Giving Compass' Take:

• Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman argue that America's young workers will help us recover from an economic recession caused by COVID-19.

• How can donors help support job programs aimed at our youth? What organizations are out there that can teach the proper skills needed?

• Here's an article on making youth employment work. 

The recent economic upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is unmatched by anything in recent memory. Social distancing has resulted in massive layoffs and furloughs in retail, hospitality, and entertainment, and millions of the affected workers—restaurant servers, cooks, housekeepers, retail clerks, and many others—were already at the bottom of the wage spectrum.

The economic catastrophe of the previous decade, the Great Recession, hit young adults and those with lower levels of education especially hard. As we approach another nationwide recession, we are about to see history repeat itself.

In a pre-pandemic analysis, we identified 53 million low-wage workers in America who earn median hourly earnings of just $10.22. Of these workers, a disproportionate share are young adults ages 18 to 24: 13 million, or 24% of all low-wage workers. These 13 million young adults are especially concentrated in industries that have been shuttered by stay-at-home and social distancing orders, and are likely to experience an outsized share of pandemic-related layoffs.

Read the full article about helping young workers by Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman at Brookings.