Photo courtesy Stockvault

The economic news yesterday was certainly not uplifting: the national unemployment rate, now hovering at just above 10 percent, isn’t getting much better any time soon.

Dig a little deeper, and the data gets more depressing for high school and college students: the unemployment rates for 16- to 24-year-olds continues to be higher than any other age range. Nearly 20 percent are looking for work.

Splice that figure, and there’s very bad news for young black males. Their unemployment rate is 30.5 percent, on par with unemployment during the Great Depression. Unemployment for young blacks was significantly higher than their white peers overall, even when the family’s income level was high, according to an analysis by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

Not only that, many employers are cutting out apprenticeship and internship programs that helped young people get the skills and some experience before looking for jobs, the Washington Post reported.  Another problem, the Post reports, is that when young people get desperate or have too much time on their hands, they may turn to drug dealing or other illegal acts.

This morning, I interviewed financial guru Dave Ramsey, author of “The Total Money Makeover” and host of television and radio shows that teach people how to get out of debt—a program he calls “Financial Peace.” He’s building a curriculum for young people—as early as elementary school—because research shows that children even as young as the earliest grades are targeted by corporate marketing and urged to purchase things they may or may not need (and thus run up credit card bills that, of course, you can’t pay when you don’t have a job.) His basic advice has been embraced by students at the middle and high-school levels, he says, because it’s so easy to follow.

“It’s the basic same stuff as we teach adults, the difference is it should be new when you’re 14, 15, 16, it shouldn’t be new when you’re 36,” he quipped.

I asked Ramsey—a self-made entrepreneur—what advice he has for students who are graduating high school and college without a job in sight.

“I don’t think [the bad economy] steals their hope,” he said, reminiscing on his coming-of-age during the recession of the early 1980s, when inflation was rampant. He took odd jobs—chopping wood, cleaning out houses, anything he could find to earn a few extra dollars.

In the short term, he advises students to look for any job they can—babysitting or petsitting, for instance, provides a good stream of income for many well-educated adults and is especially in demand during the holidays—and believe that an entrepreneurial spirit can pull just about anyone through a tough time and could perhaps even lead to a long-term business.

“Maybe the local restaurant is not filling up, and as a result they aren’t hiring you and all your buddies as busboys, but that doesn’t mean you can’t go and create work,” he says. “You might not have had to do that if the economic times hadn’t been slow, but who knows, that could turn into a blessing.”

All I can add is, just keep it legal.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor