Ensuring Economic Opportunities for Young Americans Essay

Ensuring Economic Opportunities for Young Americans - Essay Example Department of Labor), Algernon Austin (Director of the race, ethnicity, and the economy program Economic Policy Institute), Matthew Segal (Founder & Co-Chair 80 Million Strong, Dorothy), Dorothy Stoneman (President and founder YouthBuild USA) and D. Mark Wilson (Principal Applied Economic Strategies, LLC). The positions taken by each participant on the issue has been briefed as under. At the beginning of the session, Chairman Miller gave a concise opening speech on the alarming rate at which the unemployment among young Americans is on a rise. He briefed about the worsening economic conditions of the nation, comparable to the aftermath of the Second World War, due to which the younger generation in some instances have to compete with the more experienced in the job market, for jobs meant for the relatively inexperienced. In addition, a shortage of summer jobs for the youth constrained their potential education opportunities since often it is found that the students use the funds to pay their tuition fees. Moreover, summer jobs often taught them discipline and helped in the development of leadership skills in them. So, an axe on the number of such jobs had multi-dimensional effects on the future of the youth of the nation. Hence, the Chairman proposed an initial investment of $ 1.2 billion in the economy for employment generation. Besides there were other distingu ished contributors in the meeting who prescribed a number of policy suggestions to tackle the situation. The eminent participants addressed the issue by proposing strategies to curb the same. Mathew Segal recommended that any policies meant to address the issue must focus upon four different areas – the amount of resources allocated for investment should be increased, there must be increased facilities of education loans, the propensity for public service jobs must be enhanced among the young minds and the education imparted at schools must be