Michael Connery's blog

FM friend @EricaAmerica interviews young people marching for equality in Washington, DC, this past Sunday.

In advance of the Better Deal 2009 conference, the AFL-CIO has released a new (and to my knowledge unique) study of the economic state of young Americans, and their opinions on the current economic environment: Young Workers: A Lost Decade. As the name implies, the study is tracking changes in the economic state of young Americans over 10 years (the last time they did a similar study). Methodology info can be found at the bottom of the post for all the polling geeks.

Over the course of the last 6 months, this is probably one of the things I've been most asked about - data on young Americans' opinion of the economy and all that the term broadly implies (health care, new/green jobs, student debt, etc). In short, this is one of the most important studies to come out about young voters this year. Bookmark it. This is something that legislators, journalists, activists, and bloggers are going to turn to time and again between now and the midterms, and it is something I will revisit multiple times over the next few weeks.

The study contains over 40 pages of data, each with its own, important nugget of information on youth and the economy. For now, here are the topline findings as reported by the AFL-CIO:

The Lost Decade:

• Young workers are having more trouble than ever getting ahead financially. times are even tougher for young workers of color, workers without college degrees and many women.
• Compared with older workers, workers younger than 35 are significantly less likely to be covered by health insurance or have retirement plans at their jobs, and are more likely to be unemployed. today, 31 percent of young workers report being uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago. only 47 percent have retirement plans at work, down 6 percentage points from 1999.
• Only 31 percent say they make enough money to cover their bills and put some money aside—22 percentage points fewer than in 1999—while 24 percent make less than they need just to pay their monthly bills.
• With higher unemployment rates in 2009 than young workers faced in 1999, it’s hard to find a job. But it’s even harder to find a good job. More than one in three young workers worry they will not be able to find a permanent, full-time job with benefits.
• It’s also become increasingly unlikely that young workers will receive paid leave. only 58 percent receive paid sick days, and only 41 percent are offered paid family leave. one of young workers’ top-rated priorities is spending time with family. But many are worried this simply won’t be possible because time away from work often means not getting paid.
• This decline in income and benefits no doubt accounts for a significant drop in young workers’ optimism over the past decade. compared with more than 75 percent of
  young workers in 1999, today just over half say they are more hopeful than worried about their economic future—a 22-point drop.

Dreams of Adulthood Deferred

• These financial constraints are forcing young workers to postpone many of the steps young people traditionally have taken to begin their adult lives. one of the most stunning findings of this survey reveals that more than one in three young workers are currently living at home with their parents.
• Nearly two in five young workers have had to delay further education or professional development due to financial worries. the statistic is even more extreme for young
  workers of color—close to half say they’ve put educational goals on hold. And low-income workers are 30 percentage points more likely than young workers with higher incomes to worry about being able to afford the cost of education.
• Having the requisite education or training doesn’t guarantee young workers a job for which they are trained. one in five say they are over-qualified for their current jobs and 22 percent are working outside their chosen field.
• Young workers are putting off starting a family until they are more financially secure, and close to one in three say they worry very often or somewhat often that they will have to delay starting a family because of economic concerns.

An Overlooked Majority: The Plight of Low-income Young Workers

• While all young workers have lost ground over the past decade, the outlook for low-income workers is especially bleak. And this problem does not affect just the few: More than half of young workers earn less than $30,000. A third of these workers cannot pay the bills, and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses. They are also just as likely to live with parents as to live on their own.
• Making things worse, low-wage jobs are significantly less likely to offer the benefits characteristic of “good jobs.” Forty-four percent of low-income young workers do not have health insurance, and only 27 percent have pension or retirement plans from their jobs. Because low-income young workers are also less likely to be able to save for retirement on their own, many do not have any retirement savings at all. Less than half have paid sick leave, compared with more than 75 percent of workers with incomes over $30,000, and a mere 31 percent receive paid family leave.
• For too many low-income workers, the barriers to financial and personal independence seem insurmountable. Yet they remain the most confident in the leadership and agenda of President Barack Obama.

Visions for a Reinvigorated Economy

• Young workers have a clear vision for reinvigorating the economy, and it’s largely summed up by one four-letter word—Jobs.
• Along with jobs, health care and education top the economic agenda for young workers. Facing rising health care and education costs themselves, young people know that access to education and affordable health care are vital to building a better future for their generation, the next generation and America’s economy overall.
• In their own workplaces, young workers are embracing greater diversity and increased use of technology. their career goals reflect a strong desire to provide for their families and to make a positive difference in the world. But few trust their own employer to do what’s best for employees.
• Even fewer have confidence in corporate America as a whole. When asked who is most responsible for the country’s economic woes, close to 60 percent of young workers place the blame on Wall street and banks or corporate ceos. And young workers say greed by corporations and ceos is the factor most to blame for the current financial downturn. They are also considerably more likely to hold former President george W. Bush responsible for the downturn than the new administration. Only 6 percent blame President obama.
• Young workers’ priorities for the nation discredit certain brands of conventional wisdom about what’s best for young people. By a 22-point margin, young workers favor expanding public investment over reducing the budget deficit. they also take a more progressive view on contentious social issues such as immigration.
• Young workers rank conservative economic approaches such as reducing taxes, government spending and regulation on business among the five lowest of 16 long-term priorities for congress and the president.

Methodology:
The study was conducted through 1,156 telephone calls, with an oversampling of 18 - 34 year olds pulled from Catalist, as well as 50 cell phones. It's not the best methodology in the world to achieve a reliable youth sample, but it beats the methodologies used by most pollsters and news organizations, who typically drastically undersample youth.

The Wall Street Journal today reports on a drastic increase in student borrowing and debt:

Students are borrowing dramatically more to pay for college, accelerating a trend that has wide-ranging implications for a generation of young people.

New numbers from the U.S. Education Department show that federal student-loan disbursements—the total amount borrowed by students and received by schools—in the 2008-09 academic year grew about 25% over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. The amount of money students borrow has long been on the rise. But last year far surpassed past increases, which ranged from as low as 1.7% in the 1998-99 school year to almost 17% in 1994-95, according to figures used in President Barack Obama's proposed 2010 budget.

The sharp growth is "definitely above expectations," says Robert Shireman, deputy undersecretary of the Education Department. "But we're also in an economic situation that nobody predicted." The eye-opening increase in borrowing is largely due to the dire economic environment, which is causing more people to seek federal loans, he says.

The new numbers highlight how debt has become commonplace in paying for higher education. Today, two-thirds of college students borrow to pay for college, and their average debt load is $23,186 by the time they graduate, according to an analysis of the government's National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, conducted by financial-aid expert Mark Kantrowitz. Only a dozen years earlier, according to the study, 58% of students borrowed to pay for college, and the average amount borrowed was $13,172.

I don't mean to pick on a friend here, but this is a meme that deserved a quick death well over a decade ago, and lies at the root of many bad stereotypes and even worse campaign decisions about reaching young voters. From Tech President (emphasis mine):

We're a bit late in the game on this, given that happened way back last week, but the Republican New Media Caucus has gone and gotten itself a starter website. The GOP is eager to not let new media get away from it like blogs did. They want to win on Twitter, win on Facebook, win on YouTube. The added bonus is that being savvy on those mediums comes across to voters as being somewhat hip and with it, which isn't a bad thing for Republicans as they attempt to win young voters and build a youth base for a party that is worried about its next generation.

Somewhere along the way - probably in the mid 1990s, well after Madonna helped Rock the Vote make a splash in the political arena but during a period in which they all but stopped doing any field outreach - the idea arose that reaching young people for political purposes required being hip. That in turn forced a focus on celebrity culture as a key to youth organizing.

There is zero data supporting the claim that hipness or celebrity equates to effective youth outreach and party building. On the contrary, all the evidence suggests that it is traditional field work, complemented by new media, and a substantive approach to youth issues that matter most in building youth support.

Yes, Obama had celebrity, but he also had a solid youth outreach operation and spoke consistently to the concerns of young people. The quicker activists, organizers, candidates, staffers, and political committees realize this, the more success they will have with young voters and the healthier our Democracy will be.

This just hit my inbox. Good to see the dialogue. Wish it had come a whole lot sooner.

Hopefully they can drum up a lot of press and help push back against the ridiculous meme that young people don't care about health care "because we're invincible." Try un/under-employed and up to our ears in school debt.

For Immediate Release

August 25, 2009

CONTACT:
Doug Thornell – 202-225-0227
Bridgett Frey – 202-225-5384

Van Hollen to Discuss What Health Care Reform Means for Young Americans

Will be Joined by Rock the Vote, United States Students Association, YouthBuild Alumni Council, and U.S. PIRG

Washington, D.C. – Tomorrow, Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Assistant to the Speaker, will join Rock the Vote, United States Students Association, YouthBuild Alumni Council, and U.S. PIRG to discuss why health care reform is vital for young Americans. President Obama’s plan for reform will provide quality, affordable health care for all young adults, ensuring lower costs and greater choices for a group who too often does not have access to care.

WHO:

• Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)
• Thomas Bates, Vice President of Civic Engagement, Rock the Vote
• Abby Berendt Lavoi, U.S. PIRG
• Gregory Cendana, President, United States Students Association
• Nina Saxon, YouthBuild Alumni Council

WHAT: To Discuss What Health Care Reform Means for Young Americans

WHEN: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 11 am

WHERE: Speaker’s Dining Room; H-122

The DNC Youth Council is petitioning the Democratic Change Commission for a more youth-friendly primary and caucus process. You can read the text of the letter sent to the commission below:

DNC Youth Letter

NetCentric Advocacy picks up on something interesting. Mentions of the term "health care" on Facebook are currently at one of the lowest points since the final weeks of the election. In short, there is no campaign for reform happening on one of the biggest social networks in the country. The following chart shows the number of mentions of the phrase "health care" on Facebook wall posts over the last 12 months:

Facebook Lexicon, which produced the graphs, doesn't show the exact number of mentions. Rather, this is just a relative comparison of the popularity of the term over time. Still, the number of mentions is significantly smaller than during the election, particularly during the peak in November of 2008.

So what's going on here? Why does it seem like there is no activity on this topic online? Is this a failure of measurement? The lexicon results do end around mid-July, so it is possible that we're just not registering a huge surge in interest happening right now. Or is this a failure of organizing?

(Note - I changed the title of this post for accuracy.)

I'm late in getting to this, but on Monday, conservative (and Millennial) New York Times columnist Ross Douthat published an interesting article noting that the conservatives have made strange bedfellows in the health care debate, siding with seniors in favor of continuing government subsidized health care in the form of Medicare:

Conservatives have marshaled various briefs against the Democratic health care proposals. They’ve argued that the plans will be too expensive, that they’ll cramp innovation and raise premiums for the already-insured, that they’ll encourage employers to drop coverage and discourage them from hiring.

These arguments have been effective, up to a point. But they aren’t nearly as effective as warning senior citizens that Barack Obama wants to take away their health care.

That’s why Republicans find themselves tiptoeing into an unfamiliar role — as champions of old-age entitlements. The Democrats are “sticking it to seniors with cuts to Medicare,” Mitch McConnell declared. They want to “cannibalize” the program to pay for reform, John Cornyn complained. It’s a “raid,” Sam Brownback warned, that could result in the elderly losing “necessary care.”

Douthat notes, rightly I think, that while this maybe a politically savvy move in the short term, it not only flies in the face of bedrock conservative principles of smaller government and greater fiscal conservatism. As the population continues to age, it will make any conservative attempts to reform Medicare nearly impossible.

What Douthat misses, though, is that while older voters may be scared of "the government touching their Medicare," young people are the most supportive of reforming the health care system. Millennials are pragmatists. They don't care about ideology - they just want an efficient government that works for people. Right now, Republicans are not only disingenuously courting seniors (Mediscaring, as Douthat says), they are openly obstructing any good faith attempt at reform. Whether or not reform passes, that's not going to play well with youth. The Republican strategy for winning the short term political argument is another nail in the coffin or their long-term health as a viable national party.

Last year, Demos sponsored an excellent conference - A Better Deal - on revitalizing the American economy to meet the needs of young people. I was a panelist at the conference, and you can read my coverage of it here.

The need for a better deal for young Americans is more necessary than ever, and Demos is getting ready to hold the second annual Better Deal conference in October. Details are below, you can register here (for free). There are some travel scholarships available for those outside the DC area.

• Ezra Klein has "One Flowchart to Rule Them All" - a simple chart effectively explaining health care reform.
• Planet Green has simple directions for making your dorm room green.
• Textbook rentals may finally break the publishing industry's expensive monopoly on text book sales.
• Incredible explanation of how Twitter works in theory.
• Campus Progress says it's time for the internet generation to save itself.
• At Sinclair Community College, the focus is on jobs.
• CIRCLE notes that non-college youth are less likely to volunteer.