March for jobs right on time

On Sunday, Sept. 20, a National March for Jobs will step off from the historic Hill District in Pittsburgh, declaring that the unemployed, the homeless, the hungry and the poor must no longer be invisible and silent. The march is set for just prior to a summit of the G-20, the Group of Twenty finance ministers and central bank governors, being held in Pittsburgh Sept. 24-25.

This is particularly urgent for young workers, as highlighted by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert on Aug. 10. Herbert wrote: “Two issues that absolutely undermine any rosy assessment of last week’s employment report are the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed and the crushing levels of joblessness among young Americans. ... The plight of young workers, especially young men, is particularly frightening. The percentage of young American men who are actually working is the lowest it has been in the 61 years of record-keeping, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

“Only 65 of every 100 men aged 20 through 24 years old were working on any given day in the first six months of this year. ... For male teenagers, the numbers were disastrous: only 28 of every 100 males were employed in the 16- through 19-year-old age group. For minority teenagers, forget about it. The numbers are beyond scary; they’re catastrophic.”

John Smith, a 21-year-old unemployed Black resident of the Hill District, is typical of many young people. Smith told an organizer for the Sept. 20 March for Jobs: “It’s hard out here. People can’t take care of their responsibilities. There are no jobs; we need a march for jobs because it could bring change.”

Another unemployed Black youth from the Hill District, 17-year-old Shardaya Brown, said: “The job situation is poor and I don’t see things getting better. I think we need to demand jobs, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. Because people can’t find work there is more crime and I don’t feel safe.”

Herbert called the 0.1 percent unemployment drop in July “wildly deceptive,” because the decline was “not because more people found jobs, but because 450,000 people withdrew from the labor market. They stopped looking, so they weren’t counted as unemployed.”

Larry Hales, youth organizer for the Bail Out the People Movement, said: “Young workers, in particular youth of color, are demanding meaningful jobs and education, not jail or the military. The ‘free marketers’ disrupting health-care town halls hide their anti-worker economic policies that increase poverty and unemployment.”