Recession’s Lost Generations

The worst global economic slump since the Great Depression is ending and things are looking up. But for some, the recession’s toll will last for decades. Chief among them are the young adults who had the bad luck to come of age in hard times — and are on track to be this downturn’s Lost Generation. History shows they’re unlikely to fully recover from the chances they’ve missed: career-launching first jobs, early promotions, quick raises, strategic leaps from one employer to another. Those who graduated from college into the teeth of the 1981-82 U.S. recession languished behind their peers long after the economy rebounded, with lower earnings and less prestigious jobs even in middle age. Lost generations span the globe from Europe, where the longest-ever slump left almost a quarter of young people out of work, to the Middle East, where the prospects of the young remain blighted even after Arab Spring uprisings fueled by their frustration.

In the hard-hit southern tier of the European Union, youth unemployment hit highs of more than 50 percent in Spain and close to 60 percent in Greece, and by some estimates was worse than in the Great Depression. Even as Spain recovered, its youth jobless rate didn’t fall below 50 percent until the spring of 2015. In the U.S., unemployment in mid-2015 among 20- to 24-year-olds was still more than double the national rate, and for black youths it ranged up to 16.6 percent. Not only the unemployed were hurt by the downturn: In 2012 and 2013, only 44 percent of young U.S. college graduates held jobs commensurate with their education — meaning they were pushing less-skilled workers down the ladder or into unemployment. The natural churn in the labor market also has been unusually slow, with fewer people quitting jobs and fewer new hires, reducing the chances for job-hopping that is a key avenue to early career advancement.