By Tamara Draut, Director of the Economic Opportunity Program
at DemosI grew up in a union household. Thanks to union wages, I became the first in my family to graduate from college. That was back in 1993. Today, the steel workers at the factory where my father worked have been locked out for nearly a year, and college tuition at the state university I attended has more than doubled. The decline of high-paying manufacturing jobs, the decline of strong unions and the rising costs of a college education have conspired to make it exceedingly more difficult for a new generation of young people to either work or educate their way into the middle class.
And it’s not for lack of trying. Today, some three-quarters of high school graduates go on to some type of college. The problem is, most of them drop out before getting a degree and the jobs awaiting them are much lower paying than they were a generation ago.
In fact, young adults of all educational levels are earning less today than they would have 20 or even 30 years ago. Back in 1974, the typical 25– to 34-year-old male high school graduate earned $42,697, in inflation-adjusted 2004 dollars. Three decades later, median earnings for young adult male high school graduates was $30,400. That’s a 29 percent loss in income compared to young workers a generation ago. Even in the recession of the early 1980s, workers still made more money in real terms than those with only a high school degree do today. Women are earning more than they did a generation ago but still take home smaller paychecks than their male counterparts, at every level of education.
Today’s young workers won’t be aging out of these lackluster earnings. Several studies have found slower wage growth among all demographic groups of young workers. What’s more, job hopping doesn’t appear to pay off as well either, with each new job producing lower wage gains than it did a generation ago.
The story of declining economic mobility and security confronting young workers is certainly related to decimated state of unions in the labor market today. A generation ago, young workers entered the labor market on an escalator: as productivity went up, so did wages, producing a steady and swift progression in earnings. Today, young people are entering the labor market on one of those automated airport walkways: wages remain flat despite productivity gains and longer hours on the job.
In 2005, only 10.7 percent of workers aged 25 to 34 were union members, compared with 16.5 percent of workers aged 45 to 54 and 55 to 64.
The decline in good union jobs also is one of the reasons why young adults today are the age group with the highest percentage of uninsured individuals. One out of three young adults—a full 18 million 18- to 34-year-olds—don’t have health insurance. And, they’re not going without health care coverage out of some sense of invincibility either; in fact, only 3 percent of young workers are uninsured because they declined available coverage. The majority of young adult workers who are uninsured earn under $10 an hour. If health care benefits are disappearing slowly, guaranteed pension plans are on the verge of extinction.
So what can be done to revive economic opportunity, mobility and security for this generation of young workers?
There is no single solution that will turn around three decades of declining living standards for young workers. But there are many reforms that, taken together, would add up to major improvements. First, we need better funding of higher education at the state level so all young people who want to go to college have access to that dream. At the federal level, we need more generous grant aid for college. Back in the 1970s, the Pell Grant—our nation’s premier program for helping low-income students afford college—covered the cost of three-quarters of a four-year university. Today, it covers about one-third.
We also need more “earn-and-learn programs,” particularly investments in career ladders for the health and teaching professions. These two fields will continue to add lots of jobs to the economy over the next decade. Openings are expected to swell at both the lower- and higher-end of the occupational spectrum, from teaching assistant jobs, medical assistants and home health care aides to registered nurses and elementary and secondary school teachers. In fact, registered nurses will boast the largest job gains in the next decade, second only to retail associates. Rather than allowing these jobs to remain a dead-end, our local, state and federal government need to greatly expand their support for partnerships between community colleges, unions, private employers and others to create widely accessible programs to move people up the ladder.
But not all of the largest growing occupations over the next decade are ripe for career ladders—jobs including food preparation, retail sales, security guards and janitorial work. What can be done to improve the wages and quality of life for the millions of young people whose jobs make our own lives easier? The key to improving these jobs lies in tearing down the insurmountable barriers workers face in trying to form unions at their workplaces. And that’s why I support the Employee Free Choice Act now and in my book.
Young people, the majority of whom don’t have bachelor’s degrees, have been hit hardest by the decline in manufacturing jobs and the vacuum left by the weakening and hobbling of organized labor over the past three decades. Young people have a great deal to gain by the Employee Free Choice Act. Young people need the union movement and the future of the movement depends on organizing more young workers. It’s a reality both parties are starting to recognize.
