(Bloomberg) — Before the coronavirus closed most of the U.S. economy, Ginessi Ortiz was a cashier at a shoe store. Her father made deliveries for a construction company, her brother was employed at a community center and her mother had babysitting jobs.
Now they’ve all been laid off. For Ortiz, 19, and her 24-year-old brother, it’s a setback for people already in one of the toughest places for young adults to advance: the Bronx.
New York’s 15th Congressional District, where Ortiz lives with her family, offers the worst economic prospects in the U.S. for residents ages 18 to 34 years old, according to a new index compiled by Bloomberg. By contrast, the district with the second-best prospects is just a few miles away: New York’s 12th, which includes parts of eastern Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn.
Data for the Bloomberg Disenfranchised Youth Index come from 2018 U.S. Census statistics, the most recent available. Criteria are the share of young adults who were unemployed, living with a parent, stuck in poverty and lacking a high school diploma that year. Each metric was calculated separately and weighted equally to create an overall score.
The data show exactly where young people were left behind in the 11-year expansion and job-market boom that now has come to a crashing halt. As Covid-19 spreads, the disenfranchised contagion also is likely to spread beyond the demographics captured by the index.
Areas represented by Democrats dominated both extremes, including 19 of the 20 worst-ranking Congressional Districts and 16 of the 20 at the top.
Mississippi’s 2nd, in the western part of the state, and California’s 21st, in the San Joaquin Valley, rounded out the bottom three. Illinois’s 5th, which includes portions of Chicago, and California’s 12th, which covers most of San Francisco and is represented by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, joined New York’s 12th as the least disenfranchised.
Unemployment for young people 16 to 24 was 12.7% in December, near a record low. But in April it spiked to 32.7%, more than twice the national rate of 14.7%, which was the highest since the 1930s.
Ryan Bree, a recent graduate of the University of Mississippi, “wasn’t really worried about anything before the virus. With the unemployment rate being so low, I thought my job security would be fine,” he says.
Bree has a job lined up at a commercial real estate company in his home state of Delaware, and as of this week it hadn’t rescinded the offer or moved the start date. Even so, he was starting to “worry a little bit because a lot of local businesses around me, they’re getting hit hard due to lack of cash flow.”
The index reflects a rise in young people’s financial reliance on their mothers and fathers for housing and other expenses, even in affluent areas. In parts of New York’s suburban Westchester County and the north and south shores of Long Island, more than half of 18-to-34-year-olds live with a parent.
A similar trend can be seen in Fairfax, Virginia, a wealthy suburb of Washington D.C., where more than a third of young adults are still at home despite low levels of poverty, high educational attainment and relatively robust youth employment.
Ortiz and her brother live with their parents, and while they all had some money saved, “it’s starting to catch up with us, paying personal bills and credit cards and the family mobile-phone bill,” she says. Her brother’s employer continues to pay him, and she was able to get unemployment benefits, but her father wasn’t.
A couple of relatives even left New York to work on farms in the south because they haven’t received any government help. “They just can’t wait and sit around for everything to open back up because we don’t know when this is going to end.”
Ortiz is getting her associate’s degree from the Borough of Manhattan Community College and wants eventually to join the police force and become a narcotics detective, partly because she’s “always lived in a bad neighborhood,” she says.
“There’s not a day when I don’t walk home and see needles” on the street from heroin use and people who are “barely even conscious. It’s like they’re half dead and half alive,” she says. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to change.”
To access the full data set for all congressional districts, click here.
Methodology: Bloomberg’s Disenfranchised Youth Index examined some of the collective characteristics of the 18-to-34-year-old age group by Congressional District.
Each district was scored, based on these four equally weighted metrics, on a scale of 0-100:
** 1. share of those in the labor force but unemployed
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was higher in late-morning trading, helped by strength in energy stocks, while U.S. stock markets also moved up.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 34.91 points at 23,736.98.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 178.05 points at 41,800.13. The S&P 500 index was up 28.38 points at 5,661.47, while the Nasdaq composite was up 133.17 points at 17,725.30.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.56 cents US compared with 73.57 cents US on Monday.
The November crude oil contract was up 68 cents at US$69.70 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was up three cents at US$2.40 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was down US$7.80 at US$2,601.10 an ounce and the December copper contract was up a penny at US$4.28 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Canada’s inflation rate fell to two per cent last month, finally hitting the Bank of Canada’s target after a tumultuous battle with skyrocketing price growth.
The annual inflation rate fell from 2.5 per cent in July to reach the lowest level since February 2021.
Statistics Canada’s consumer price index report on Tuesday attributed the slowdown in part to lower gasoline prices.
Clothing and footwear prices also decreased on a month-over-month basis, marking the first decline in the month of August since 1971 as retailers offered larger discounts to entice shoppers amid slowing demand.
The Bank of Canada’s preferred core measures of inflation, which strip out volatility in prices, also edged down in August.
The marked slowdown in price growth last month was steeper than the 2.1 per cent annual increase forecasters were expecting ahead of Tuesday’s release and will likely spark speculation of a larger interest rate cut next month from the Bank of Canada.
“Inflation remains unthreatening and the Bank of Canada should now focus on trying to stimulate the economy and halting the upward climb in the unemployment rate,” wrote CIBC senior economist Andrew Grantham.
Benjamin Reitzes, managing director of Canadian rates and macro strategist at BMO, said Tuesday’s figures “tilt the scales” slightly in favour of more aggressive cuts, though he noted the Bank of Canada will have one more inflation reading before its October rate announcement.
“If we get another big downside surprise, calls for a 50 basis-point cut will only grow louder,” wrote Reitzes in a client note.
The central bank began rapidly hiking interest rates in March 2022 in response to runaway inflation, which peaked at a whopping 8.1 per cent that summer.
The central bank increased its key lending rate to five per cent and held it at that level until June 2024, when it delivered its first rate cut in four years.
A combination of recovered global supply chains and high interest rates have helped cool price growth in Canada and around the world.
Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem recently signalled that the central bank is ready to increase the size of its interest rate cuts, if inflation or the economy slow by more than expected.
Its key lending rate currently stands at 4.25 per cent.
CIBC is forecasting the central bank will cut its key rate by two percentage points between now and the middle of next year.
The U.S. Federal Reserve is also expected on Wednesday to deliver its first interest rate cut in four years.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick‘s finance minister says the province recorded a surplus of $500.8 million for the fiscal year that ended in March.
Ernie Steeves says the amount — more than 10 times higher than the province’s original $40.3-million budget projection for the 2023-24 fiscal year — was largely the result of a strong economy and population growth.
The report of a big surplus comes as the province prepares for an election campaign, which will officially start on Thursday and end with a vote on Oct. 21.
Steeves says growth of the surplus was fed by revenue from the Harmonized Sales Tax and federal money, especially for health-care funding.
Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs has promised to reduce the HST by two percentage points to 13 per cent if the party is elected to govern next month.
Meanwhile, the province’s net debt, according to the audited consolidated financial statements, has dropped from $12.3 billion in 2022-23 to $11.8 billion in the most recent fiscal year.
Liberal critic René Legacy says having a stronger balance sheet does not eliminate issues in health care, housing and education.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
