In this paper we briefly review recent trends in employment outcomes for disadvantaged youth, focusing specifically on those who have become "disconnected" from school and the labor market, and why these trends have occurred. We then review a range of policy prescriptions that might improve those outcomes. These policies include: 1) Efforts to enhance education and employment outcomes, both among in-school youth who are at risk of dropping out and becoming disconnected as well as out-of-school youth who have already done so; 2) Policies to increase earnings and incent more labor force participation among youth, such as expanding the eligibility of childless adults (and especially non-custodial parents) for the Earned Income Tax Credit; and 3) Specific policies to reduce barriers to employment faced by ex-offenders and non-custodial parents. We also consider policies that target the demand side of the labor market, in efforts to spur the willingness of employers to hire these young people and perhaps to improve the quality of jobs available to them.

At one time or another, most of us have heard our mothers or fathers say that we have to do something we don't like because they are "the parent." We also know that, because they are the parent, we have to comply with what they say.

When we grow up and leave home, that relationship changes, but, as anyone who has ever held a job knows, we must follow our employers' orders. (After all, that's why we call them "bosses.") Those of us in the private sector who are not represented by unions can be fired at our employer's will, or, as it's often put, for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason. As a result, most private-sector workers have little bargaining power.

Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to create equality of bargaining power between employers and employees, because decades of experience showed that employers used their greater power to impose worse and worse working conditions for employees. The result was depressed wages and working conditions that reduced workers' purchasing power, which caused recessions and depressions and led to strikes and industrial strife. Congress observed that employers had more power than employees because employers had the legal right to organize as corporations and partnerships, while employees had no such protected right.

First published online May 15, 2013, by Truth-out.org. Reprinted with permission.

Our very expensive federal retirement programs crowd out needed expenditures for poor children and youth in the areas of education and job training along with many other public investments. This crowding out will become much more severe in the next few decades, unless we are willing to reform the retirement programs and begin to limit these expenditures.

First published online March 8, 2013, in The Washington Post.