There Already Is Double-Digit Unemployment... if You're Under 30

While the official unemployment rate stands at 7.2%, for workers under the age of 30, it's 11% according to new statistics from the US Department of Labor. 

President-elect Obama needs to remember the strong support of young voters when he starts crafting his stimulus package. Not only are young people having a harder time finding work, they are graduating with increasingly higher loads of student debt, and that debt load is sure to increase as cash-strapped states cut funding for higher education.

When America's old people wanted a Medicare prescription drug benefit, they got it. Young people just want to be able to go to college without mortgaging their financial future. Whether its increasing the maximum amount of the Federal Pell Grant, or providing block grants to the states to fund education, or (how about this) insisting on cost sharing and reform in higher education as a condition of the first two, President-elect Obama needs to reduce the student debt crisis that is only being made worse by the high unemployment rates for young workers.