By Rainesford Stauffer

(EXCERPT)

For young Black people, Bird notes, the unemployment rate was already persistently high before Covid-19. “So it didn’t jump as much because they were already out of the labor force,” she adds. For low-income young people living in high-poverty communities, first jobs — summer jobs — “have not necessarily been in their communities for decades,” Bird says.

“The Covid crisis has revealed — not to young people because they know it in their communities — but to lots of people that many, many folks weren’t doing well and young people, young workers were a big part of that,” Bird says.

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