Targeting Sectors to Narrow the Gap, NYC Disconnection.

New York, USA

By Leah Aykan
disconnection, youth, 21st century skills, 21st century labor market

This is a statistical & geospatial analysis of how juvenile detention rates & reading scores per CD are correlated to the DY rate.

In the United States there are 5.5 million youth between the ages of 16 to 24 who are not in school and unemployed, disconnected from all the opportunities and advantages that academic institutions and early work-place responsibility can instill in adolescents in their formative years (Lewis, K. & Burd-Sharps, 2011). In New York City, the city with the largest school district in the country, there are 220,000 young people in this age group who are disconnected from the meaningful opportunities that help support our Nation’s young people in having a successful transition to adulthood (Treschan & Molnar, 2008).

The rate of youth disconnection in the New York metro area (15.2 percent), which includes both New York City and neighboring counties and communities, is 0.5 percent higher than the national average, which is 14.7 percent (Lewis, K. & Burd-Sharps, 2013). There is a significant gap in the disconnection rates between boroughs. For example, in Manhattan’s East Side neighborhoods of Turtle Bay, Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, only 3.7 percent of young people are disconnected, while in the Bronx neighborhoods of Melrose, Hunts Point, and Mott Haven, the rate is 35.6 percent, nearly ten times higher.

(chart of NYC borough DY)

The issue of disconnection is even more harmful to these youth then in the past because 1) there is a large portion of the youth population dropping out of school before they graduate high school, 2) the 21st century job market is demanding more advanced analytical and critical thinking skills, 3) the jobs being created are demanding more educational attainment. These three facts indicate a widening gap between the skills required by the job market and the ability of the youth to meet the required skill sets. Therefore, increasing high-school drop-out rates might lead to a vicious circle where disconnected youth will even be more disconnected in further stages of their lives, because they will have a harder time in finding the jobs that will enable them to support themselves and a family.

(Labor Market Demand Shift)

In 2012, the unemployment rate for young adults between ages 16 and 24 was 19.5 percent, which is, twice the citywide average of 8.8 percent, also twice as high as other age groups. Studies show that the increasing number of disconnected youth in the last decade and the high unemployment rates can be linked to the inability of school systems to provide enough young people with the educational foundation, skills and training to meet the requirements of today’s job market (Christian, 2014).

(map of earnings and ed attainment)