Unemployment is sky-high for young workers in the COVID-19 economy, this week in the war on workers

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The Great Recession dragged down Millennials, putting them years behind economically. Now, the COVID-19 recession is damaging another generation of young workers. Workers aged 16 to 24 typically have higher unemployment and underemployment than older workers (and remember here that you only count as unemployed if you’re trying to find work—it’s not like this statistic counts kids who don’t want to work), but “The overall unemployment rate for young workers ages 16–24 jumped from 8.4% to 24.4% from spring 2019 to spring 2020, while unemployment for their counterparts ages 25 and older rose from 2.8% to 11.3%,” the Economic Policy Institute reports. “Spring 2020 unemployment rates were even higher for young Black, Hispanic, and Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) workers (29.6%, 27.5%, and 29.7%, respectively).”

That’s not just a problem now. It puts young people behind the curve on getting job experience, it means debts can build up faster, and “Research on prior recessions finds substantial evidence that workers who enter the labor market during an economic downturn are scarred for many years. These unlucky workers are more likely to experience lower earnings, greater earnings instability, and more spells of unemployment in the long term compared with similar individuals who entered the labor market in better times.”

● Mothers are the “shock absorbers” of our society, Jessica Grose writes. That’s bad enough, but in the pandemic, there are too many shocks to be absorbed. In a similar vein, Anne Helen Petersen argues We’re just beginning to understand the extent of COVID-19’s feminist nightmare.

● Unions are beginning to talk about staving off a possible coup, Barbara Madeloni reports.

What if Trump refuses to accept a loss? “If he doesn’t, we need a plan already in place, ready to implement on a minute’s notice, to remove him from office,” wrote Rochester CLC President Dan Maloney in an email. “A national general strike, if joined by all democracy-loving Americans, can be the impetus the Congress and judiciary need to fulfill their role as co-equal branches of government.”

● Princeton to pay nearly $1.2 million to female professors to address inequity. Despite that agreement after a Labor Department investigation, the university says it did nothing wrong.

● Erik Loomis has been working to include slavery in U.S. labor history. This thread is worth a read:

● Trump had a bridge to sell us. How did that go?

● There’s a nightmare facing the poor and working class if there’s not another stimulus, Jeff Schuhrke writes.