ABSTRACT
The excess supply of young workers permits employers considerable freedom to be discriminatory in their hiring policies, but it does not, oddly enough, permit the same freedom with respect to their wage policies. Some employers have job-evaluation systems that set job rates without regard to the state of the labor market; others are bound into a negotiated wage pattern that makes entry rates unresponsive to the labor market. The principal cause of rising youth unemployment during the 1960s has been the increase in labor supply. The larger groups of young job seekers crowding into the depressed labor market in the late 1950s competed for a smaller number of jobs. Unemployment rose rapidly, and the proportion of long-term unemployment also increased. Increased seasonality of the labor force certainly accounts for some of the growth in youth unemployment in recent years. Seasonality and part-time job seeking together impose significant constraints on the availability of young workers.
