Overview
There’s a problem with our conception of progress in America today. It’s based on money measures and not much else. Measure of America creates metrics to tell us about how people are doing. One fundamental indicator of societal progress and well-being is how young people are faring in their transition to adulthood.
The 2021 youth disconnection rate is 12.1 percent, or 4,690,900 young people. The 2021 figure is an improvement on the 2020 rate, 12.6 percent, but still falls far short of the 2019 rate of 10.7 percent. Between 2010 and 2019, the youth disconnection rate fell 27 percent, driven largely by the steady increase in youth employment in the years following the Great Recession. On the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic, the youth disconnection rate was lower than it had been in over a decade. But between 2019 and 2021, the rate increased 13.1 percent.
Measure of America has, since 2012, been providing unique calculations of this population at the state, county, city, and neighborhood level, by race and ethnicity, for young women and men, and, for the first time this year, for rural, suburban and urban counties in an effort to draw attention to this population and provide policymakers, business leaders, philanthropists, and community leaders with the up-to-date data they need to target their interventions and assess the effectiveness of their efforts. Data and analysis can be found here.
These vulnerable young people are cut off from the people, institutions, and experiences that would otherwise help them develop the knowledge, skills, maturity, and sense of purpose required to live rewarding lives as adults. And the negative effects of youth disconnection ricochet across the economy, the social sector, the criminal justice system, and the political landscape, affecting us all.
Annual Youth Disconnection Reports
Ensuring an Equitable Recovery (2023)
A Decade Undone: 2021 Update (2021)
More Than a Million Reasons for Hope (2018)
Promising Gains, Persistent Gaps (2017)
Zeroing In on Place and Race (2015)
Related Projects
Youth Disconnection in Central Louisiana (2023)
Building Bright Futures for Youth in Los Angeles (2022)
Building Bright Futures for Youth in New Orleans (2022)
Two Futures: The Economic Case for Keeping Youth on Track (2018)
San Diego’s Opportunity Youth (2017, 2018)
Career360: An Employer-Led Approach to Bridging the Opportunity Divide (2017)