Starbucks (SBUX) is leading a team of more than a dozen big companies-- including Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT), JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Microsoft (MSFT)-- in a push to get young people working.
The initiative, called 100,000 Opportunities Initiative, has a goal of giving 100,000 Americans aged 16 to 24 jobs through hiring, apprenticeships, internships and training programs.
Yahoo Finance’s Aaron Task notes the unemployment rate for that age bracket was 12.1% in June, more than double the national average of 5.3%. And a big reason for that goes back to the financial crash of 2008.
“After the Great Recession, a lot of baby boomers said ‘I need a part-time job’ as opposed to retiring,” he explains. “So they’re taking up a lot of those jobs that in the past might go to someone who was in school or just out of school trying to figure out what they want to do with themselves. And there may be people who aren’t baby boomers who just need a second job or a third job.”
And Task adds when employers have a choice, they usually go with the older worker.
“If you can hire an adult who has experience you’re more likely to do that than hire a teenager or someone who dropped out of school or are in their early 20’s and might not have any experience,” he notes.
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Starbucks says 5.6 million Americans 16-24 years old are both out of school and out of work. And at the same time, there are 3.5 million unfilled jobs that don’t require a four-year college degree. The coalition hopes to connect the two through the initiative.
Task feels that while creating 100,000 jobs won’t make that much of a difference, it’s a start.
“It’s a drop in the bucket,” he says. “But let’s give (Starbucks CEO) Howard Schultz and Starbucks and the other companies credit for trying. Perhaps this can be a test pilot program, and if it works expand it to something closer to that five million mark. But it’s going to be very hard to find something to employ all those people.”
Task points out that initiatives such as this reflect a growing movement by corporate America to throw its weight behind a variety of social concerns.
“The minimum wage issue, we’ve seen some corporations step up and do it voluntarily, not wait for the government,” he notes. “You saw Walmart push back against the Religious Freedom Act that was being pushed by the governor of Arkansas, and Howard Schultz and Starbucks have tried to get themselves involved in a number of things, including race relations.”
And Task says that’s a good thing.
“Whether you like it or not, corporations are incredibly powerful in this country,” he adds. “So it’s probably a good thing that they use that power not just for profit but to do some public good as well.”