Sections

Commentary

Top 5 / Bottom 5 Metro Areas for Youth Employment in 2012

In a new report and interactive released today, “The Plummeting Labor Market Fortunes of Teens and Young Adults,” researchers from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program examine data for the employment prospects of teens and young adults in the nation’s top 100 metropolitan areas. “On a number of measures—employment rates, labor force underutilization, unemployment, and year-round joblessness—teens and young adults fared poorly, and sometimes disastrously,” the report’s authors write. “This report provides a number of strategies to reduce youth joblessness and labor force underutilization.”

Below are tables that summarize just some of the data available and used in the interactive, which you can use to look up different rates for each of the 100 metro areas, as well as other indicators for each location. The complete data sheet is here [.xls].

Top 5 / Bottom 5 metro areas for youth employment, ages 16-19, in 2012

U.S. rate: 27.5 percent

rank metro area rate
1 Provo-Orem, UT 48.6
2 Portland-South Portland-Biddeford, ME 43.9
3 Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA 42.8
4 Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA 42.1
5 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 39.5
96 El Paso, TX 18.8
97 Greensboro-High Point, NC 18.5
98 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 16.7
99 McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX 16.5
100 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 15.1

Top 5 / Bottom 5 metro areas for youth employment, ages 20-24, in 2012

U.S. rate: 63.1 percent

rank metro area rate
1

Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA

79.4
2 Portland-South Portland-Biddeford, ME 78.4
3 Provo-Orem, UT 77.8
4 Ogden-Clearfield, UT 77.1
5 Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA 75.3
96 Fresno, CA 54.7
97 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA 54.7
98 Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL 53.7
99 Modesto, CA 51.8
100 McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX 50.6

The report also includes a series of recommendations and quick facts, available on the interactive page.