Data Brief: Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Youth and Young Adult Employment in Chicago, Illinois, and the U.S.

Executive Summary:

As previously documented, youth joblessness and disconnection from school and work are ongoing systemic issues in Chicago, with higher rates of violence in areas of concentrated youth joblessness (Córdova and Wilson, 2017a). In this data brief, we seek to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted those rates and what has been the pace, if any, of recovery.

The brief quantifies the pandemic’s impact on jobless, and jobless and out of school rates for young people, breaking down the data by race/ethnicity, and sex for Chicago, Illinois and the U.S. We examine data for 16- to 19- and 20- to 24-year-olds, breaking down the data by race/ethnicity and sex for Chicago, Illinois, and the U.S.