U.S. Jobs Rebound Isn't Helping the Missing Men

The unemployment numbers for August released last week showed that teenagers, a demographic group that has been dormant in the labor force in recent years, have experienced significant progress. The improvement, however, is further evidence that urgent attention must be paid to another group, the so-called missing men, the 7 million males age 24 to 54 who have disappeared from the workforce.

There are two reasons that tracking the teen unemployment rate is so valuable. First, these workers don't have the structural or displacement concerns that their older counterparts sometimes have. There are no teen workers with mortgages on underwater houses, or whose jobs have been outsourced or who have been displaced by technology. Teens are more mobile and flexible than all other age groups. In this way, their unemployment rate is a better signal about cyclical slack in the labor market.