Workers under the age of 34 face higher unemployment rates than older workers and make up nearly half of the currently unemployed. As student debt continues to build up—exceeding even credit card debt—and wages stagnate or fall for workers with or without a college degree, young workers are accruing less wealth than their parents—perhaps the first time in U.S. history when a generation has failed to do better than its parents. Young workers struggle to find work and often take jobs that are below their education and skill level or bounce from contract to unpaid internship to temp job without the stability of a full-time regular job but with all the long hours and hard work.

As we approach International Workers' Day, also known as May Day, it's hard not to wonder about the future of the labor movement, and whether or not young people in the United States will wake up and see that joining labor unions could be a part of the solution to the nation's 22.9% youth unemployment rate.

In a new report for Demos, Stuck: Young America's Persistent Jobs Crisis, authors Catherine Ruetschlin and Tamara Draut examine the state of the youth workforce in the United States and find that while the overall economy is showing signs of improvement, young workers are still in a state of crisis. The authors warn that if policy isn't changed to address the challenges young people face, "we risk a generation marked by the insecurities of the Great Recession for the rest of their working lives."

Neidi Dominguez came to the United States at the age of nine with her mother and younger sister. In 2008, she graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has been an advocate and organizer for DREAMers and helped lead efforts to pass the federal DREAM Act. Recently, she served as a strategic campaign coordinator for the CLEAN Carwash Campaign.

This article originally appeared in The Journeyman, the newspaper for the Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County (Calif.). It is written by Journeyman editor Paul Burton.

Like other Building Trades apprenticeships, the Laborers’ (LIUNA's) training program prepares men and women for careers in construction. The apprenticeship program at the Northern California Laborers Training Center in San Ramon is relatively new and has been providing training for new laborers for just 12 years. Apprenticeship coordinator Manny Carrillo said as the work that Laborers do has become more specialized and the workers need to learn more skills, the program is now mandatory.

Veronica Avila, the daughter of immigrants who rose out of Chicago's poor meatpacking neighborhood and later organized restaurant workers, has been named winner of the 2012 Edna Award.

The Edna, which has a $10,000 prize, honors women age 35 or younger who already have distinguished themselves as leaders of the social justice movement. The award honors Edna Berger, a pioneer for women’s rights, who rose from a receptionist at The Philadelphia Inquirer to become a writer, editor and the first female organizer in The Newspaper Guild-CWA.

What's at stake for working families in the November elections? Try health care, retirement security and jobs, to name a few. Just ask Travis Turner's mom, who is so grateful for the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act made it possible for her son Travis, who has a rare form of liver cancer, to get back on his father's health insurance after he was kicked off for exceeding a lifetime limit. Mitt Romney plans to overturn the health care law, which helped the Turner family and millions of others receive health care. 

Watch the video, "AFL-CIO: What's at Stake in the November 2012 Elections?" and click here to share on Facebook. 

We learned a lot of things about Mitt Romney during last night's debate. Not only does he want to continue the failed economic policies that brought on the recession in the first place, but he also wants to hand our feathered friend Big Bird the pink slip to continue tax breaks for the wealthiest people (the math doesn't add up). The candidates talked a lot about taxes, education and social insurance programs, but what we really enjoyed about the debates last night was listening to working people on Twitter and on our AFL-CIO Now blog's live chat. 

Read the entire live chat thread below and check out some of the top comments and insights from our readers:

Why does Romney keep saying what his plan isn't? 5 weeks out, we deserve specifics #LetsDebate

— Liz McElroy (@lizmcelroy) October 4, 2012

Young workers in the euro zone have been among the hardest hit by the global economic crisis, and now even those in regions like East Asia, where economies have remained strong through the recession, are struggling to get jobs, a new International Labor Organization (ILO) report shows (click chart to enlarge).