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LWC: Unemployment rate higher among black teens

6 years 10 months 1 week ago Thursday, May 18 2017 May 18, 2017 May 18, 2017 5:35 PM May 18, 2017 in News
Source: WBRZ
By: WBRZ staff

BATON ROUGE – This week, the school year will end for several students and summer vacation will begin, which also means that some teenagers will be looking for summer jobs.

However, there is a clear distinction in unemployment rates among teens.

According to the Louisiana Workforce Commission, the unemployment rate for white teenagers is 12.2 percent while the unemployment rate for black teenagers is almost 30 percent.

For Jewel Jones and her brother Donovan Jones, the search for summer jobs has already begun.

Jewel said that she does hair for her friends and family and wants to do cosmetology work in a beauty shop.

"To get experience, to see if I really want to to that when I get older," Jewel Jones said.

Her brother said that he prefers working with his hands outdoors.

"Jobs that not only deal with lawn mowing, but stuff in the public," Donovan Jones said.

The Jones siblings will be competing with thousands of other students for summer jobs. The office of Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome doubled the amount of jobs for this year's summer youth program.

"Our young people are valuable assets top our community and we want to be able to help them shape their future and helping them on a trajectory of success," Broome said.

All of the 200 jobs the mayor's office that were offered have been filled.

"We are going to continue to to work, to look at private/public partnership opportunities that will open up opportunities for young people," Broome said.

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