Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 21:55:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Shawgi A. Tell" <tell@acsu.buffalo.edu>
To: Progressive Sociologists Network <psn@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject: Youth Unemployment 

Greetings,

	Unemployment is the product of the capitalist economic system.  It
is rooted in the fundamental contradiction between social labor and
private ownership.  A large pool of unemployed keeps wages down and job
insecurity high.  Unemployment also fosters crime, poverty and other
extremely serious social problems.  But unemployment is not the only
work-related problem under capitalism.  Under-employment is also a growing
problem under capitalism.
	The deepening of the capitalist economic crisis is reflected in
recent figures on youth unemployment.

Unemployed youth age 24 and below
---------------------------------
		% unemployed
		male	female	total

Spain		37	51	43
Finland		32	36	34
Italy		29	39	34
France		26	32	29
Greece		20	37	28
Belgium		19	27	22
Sweden		22	22	22
Ireland		18	16	17 
Australia	17	16	16
Canada		19	14	16
Portugal	13	20	16
New Zealand	16	14	15
United Kingdom	16	11	14
United States	13	11	12
Germany		11	9	10
Netherlands	9	11	10
Norway		11	9	10
Luxembourg	8	8	8
Denmark		6	9	7
Japan		7	7	7
Austria		4	7	6
Switzerland	6	6	6

[Source: The Progress of Nations, UNICEF, 1997]

	Capitalism has entered a "jobless recovery" period, a period in
which the productive forces are being destroyed rapidly.  As a result,
millions are swelling the ranks of the permanent unemployed and poor.  In
all this it is the youth and students who are the hardest hit.  Their
future looks bleak, even with an education.
	In order for society to progress, in order for the students
and youth to have a bright future, the root-cause of this retrogressive
and inhumane situation must be targeted.  Needed today is an economic
system based on the motive of satisfying the constantly rising material
and cultural needs of the people.  Youth unemployment is to be expected in
a society based on an economic system which concentrates social wealth in
fewer and fewer hands.  The objective interests of the youth as a
collective are actually negated by bourgeois society.
	The youth and students can secure their future by taking up the
politics of empowerment.  This will enable them to discuss what it is they
as a collective can and must do in order to eliminate the havoc wreaked
upon them by capitalism.  Together they can determine their objective
interests and develop plans to achieve their aims.  
	The students and youth do not have a voice in bourgeois society.
Their unemployment levels alone confirm this.  And trying to bring about
change for the better by participating in the illegitimate political
set-up of the rich will only lead to the further marginalization of the
students and youth.  Ultimately, the students and youth have no choice but
to take up the struggle to overthrow capitalism and usher in the New and
modern.


Shawgi Tell
Graduate School of Education
University at Buffalo
tell@acsu.buffalo.edu