If you’re like me you’re young and trying to find work, so you know how difficult that this these days. Well brace yourself, it’s only going to get worse.
Campus Progress’s Jake Blumgart is reporting that the AFL-CIO is going to step up and focus specifically on in turning young workers into young union members.
If I were looking to go and destroy the working prospects of young people, that is exactly the course I would pursue. After all,
- Four out of the five states with the highest amounts of unemployment are at least 33% more unionized than the national average
- Artificially high wages, created by both unions and minimum wage raises, increase unemployment by pricing young and unskilled labor out of the market
- Unionization privileges age and seniority over effort and skill, another barrier to youth employment
- Union members get locked into defined-benefit pension programs that have exceedingly poor returns and ultimately lead to severe restrictions on lifetime earnings. Even worse, the Department of Labor has reported that only 19% of union pension plans are fully funded.
There’s a lot of things America could do to help young workers. Pushing them into unions isn’t one of them though.