WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) spoke on Tuesday at a U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing about quality workforce development and barriers to employment, highlighting the importance of creating employment opportunities for young people given lower youth employment rates and to ensure they learn the skills necessary to succeed in the workforce later in life.

“What had happened during [the Great Recession] was that the percentage of older workers or the percentage of older Americans in the workforce had dramatically increased, whereas the percentage of younger Americans in the workforce had plummeted. You’ve essentially seeing the shift of young people in the workforce coming out and older people going in. And the sort of long term data here is pretty frightening,” Murphy said.

Murphy added: “Between 2000 and 2018 workforce participation rates for those ages 16 to 19, fell from about one-half of the population to one-third. That’s stunning in an 18-year period of time. And we know it just got worse during the pandemic, because we saw again, a bottoming out of summer job opportunities for teenagers.”

On the importance of early work experience for young people, Murphy said: “I want to talk about barriers to employment for teenagers and for young workers, because it’s those early work experiences that set the platform for later success. And we just have a stunningly fewer number of kids who are having those positive workforce experiences when they're teenagers. And if you have these barriers later on in life, they're just compounded by a lack of exposure to the workforce and to job skills when you're in those early formative years.”

You can read Murphy’s full exchange with Peter Beard, Senior Vice President for Greater Houston Partnership’s Regional Workforce Development, and Nicole Sherard-Freeman, Group Executive for the City of Detroit’s Job, Economy, & Detroit at Work, below:

MURPHY: “Thank you very much Madam Chair. Thank you all for your testimony today. I remember looking at a really interesting data set right on the back end of the Great Recession when we had recovered most of our employment. And what it showed was that though over that period of time, a lot of people had become unemployed and then a lot of people had been re-employed, there had been this really fascinating shift in terms of age demographics.

“What had happened during that time was that the percentage of older workers or the percentage of older Americans in the workforce had dramatically increased whereas the percentage of younger Americans in the workforce had plummeted. You’ve essentially seeing the shift of young people in the workforce coming out and older people going in. And the sort of long term data here is pretty frightening, right?

“Between 2000 and 2018 workforce participation rates for those ages 16 to 19, fell from about one-half of the population to one-third. That’s stunning in an 18-year period of time. And we know it just got worse during the pandemic, because we saw again, a bottoming out of summer job opportunities for teenagers.

“And so I wanted to focus just, and I'll ask this to the to the panel and maybe directed initially to you, Mr. Beard, but then open it up to others. I want to talk about barriers to employment for teenagers and for young workers, because it’s those early work experiences that set the platform for later success. And we just have a stunningly fewer number of kids who are having those positive workforce experiences when they're teenagers. And if you have these barriers later on in life, they're just compounded by a lack of exposure to the workforce and to job skills when you're in those early formative years.

“So are there specific things we need to be thinking about in order to overcome this pullout of the workforce of teenagers? Because it seems to me, given the data telling us something has happened very quickly to that population, we need to have a targeted policy to address those barriers.”

BEARD: “I think there are several things, Senator, and thank you for the question. The first is we need to start, obviously, in the school system and creating opportunity there. We've got some really good examples in Houston, where our employers have partnered with the school districts and the community colleges to do pre-apprenticeship programs that then provide summer internships, you know, at $13, $14 an hour that create that culture. And it also has the employers responsibility of working with the school system to actually ensure, to Senator Kaine’s point, they're developing the essential skills.

“I think the second one is Mayor Turner, in Houston, has advanced his Hire Houston Youth Program, which really engages the business community to  provide paid summer internships to youth in Houston.

“And then third, I think there are opportunities about how do we work with community based organizations to support students as they get ready to go into internships during their school years. But then at the other point is how do we open up the funnel with employers once they've left the school districts to find pathways, which is a really difficult thing with opportunity youth because they've disconnected from the system. I'll let others respond.”

SHERARD-FREEMAN: “If I might, Senator, we are in the seventh year of Grow Detroit’s Young Talent, which is the city Summer Youth Employment Program that the mayor launched when he when he took office. Every year we placed more than 8,000 young people into opportunities. We target 14 to 24 year olds, so certainly covering the opportunity youth that Mr. Beard is referencing. These are essential skills jobs. These are jobs working in our fire cadets and with our police department and with community based organizations.

“We think it is an essential way to ensure that the pipeline of talent of young people are engaged and more importantly, have relationships with local employers so that over the long term they have an opportunity baked into their future.”

MURPHY: “And I thank you for these responses. This intentionality about making sure that young people have those experiences, which does often involve some amount of subsidy, I think is required in an economy where so many more older workers now need to stay in the workforce longer. You'd love it if the private sector had the solution for these kids. But ultimately, with so many folks needing to stay in the workforce longer in order to make sure they have enough for retirement, in order to make sure they have food on the table, we’re going to have to be a little bit more intentional in the mechanisms by which we use, sometimes using subsidy to get those kids those skills they need early on. Thank you very much Madam Chair.”

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