The unemployment rate among youths this summer dropped to a 50-year low, new data shows.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the unemployment rate among youths was 9.1% in July, down from 9.2% in July 2018. This figure is an indicator of how many young Americans aged 16-24 seek and find work during the summer months when they're on a summer break from school.
This summer's number is the lowest since 1966, which saw an 8.8% unemployment rate in the demographic.
"The labor market for teens who want to work is great," economist Paul Harrington of Drexel University told the Journal. "My complaint with the teen labor market is not that kids who are seeking jobs aren't getting them, but that we have too low a share of kids seeking jobs."
The summer unemployment rate for youths peaked in 2010 during the recession, when 19.1% of people aged 16-24 were not working over the summer. That included a 26.5% unemployment rate among 16- to 19-year-olds.
On the other side, 61.8% of people aged 16-24 worked in July, a nine-year high. In 1989, that figure was 77.5%.
In terms of race, 64.1% of whites, 58.3% of blacks, 57.8% of Hispanics, and 44.6% of Asians were working last month.
The Department of Labor announced earlier this month that the overall unemployment rate in July was at 3.7%, marking the 17th consecutive month the number was below 4%.
President Donald Trump continues to insist the economy is strong, pointing to the unemployment rate and other market indicators, in the face of concerns that the nation is heading toward a recession.