Oregon Public Broadcasting

Oregon’s unemployment rate held steady at about 12 percent for the month of July. It’s the fifth month in a row that it’s been around that spot.

Tom Fuller with the state Department of Employment wouldn’t predict a turnaround, but tried to be optimistic.

Tom Fuller: “It’s really hard to tell if we’ve hit the bottom at this point, but we are seeing a moderation in the number of folks that are claiming benefits – and that’s really good news. We know there are jobs out there, and people are applying for them, people are getting those jobs. People are beginning to go back to work. So, the gloom isn’t quite as gloomy as it was.”

But where there’s gloom for the overall work force – it can seem pitch dark for younger workers. Rob Manning reports on efforts to brighten things up.

Oregon doesn’t track the unemployment rate for young people from month-to-month. But nationally, nearly one in four teenagers – 24 percent – was unemployed in July.

And youth advocates say Oregon’s youth unemployment rate – like its overall jobless rate – is one of the worst in the U.S.

State employment economist, Art Ayre, says young people tend to be unemployed in bigger numbers.

Art Ayre: “That is partly due to the fact that they’re just coming into the labor force. They’re trying to figure out what job they want, they may change jobs and spend some time looking for a job. It may be harder for them to find a job, because they don’t have the experience that other people do.”

Congress passed federal stimulus bills to try to help several parts of the economy – and one of them involved spending millions to put young people to work.

Three million dollars of that passed through Multnomah and Washington counties to non-profit providers for internships.

18-year-old Johnny Valenzuela just finished a two-month internship at Everett Street Autoworks in Portland.

He says he had a rough start, but he learned a lot from one of the more experienced mechanics. 

Johnny Valenzuela: “After a while, he got trust in me, and I could do it myself.”

Interns like Valenzuela earned about $1500 to $1800 for eight weeks of work.

The auto shop’s owner, Jake Hammer, says it worked out to be a good deal.

Jake Hammer: “It was a mutually beneficial relationship – he helped us out quite a bit. In two months, he gets a taste for what he would be doing, and either it’s going to scare him, or it’s going to motivate him. And I think in this case, it motivated him.”

Officials with the internship program say a number of businesses have offered jobs to their interns. Hammer doesn’t have a job for Valenzuela, but part-time work is a possibility, if the teenager wants to turn a wrench between auto repair classes.

The Youth Summer Works program touches 420 work sites from Hillsboro to Gresham, including schools, offices, and health care facilities. All participants are low-income, and tend to have other challenges – maybe they might have children of their own, or they’re high school dropouts.

Jaqueline Seeley is a 20-year-old interested in a career in health care. She’s interning at the Rose Schnitzer Manor retirement home. Even though she wants to be a nurse, she values just chatting with the retirees.

Jaqueline Seeley: “I mean, just the other day, I got tea time with the seniors, and they were great – they hugged me, and kissed me on the head, and told me about all their experiences. So that’s beyond hands-on experience, I’m actually getting to meet senior citizens, and learn what it’s like to work in this type of facility.”

Seeley says without the internship she wouldn’t be making progress toward her medical career at all.

Jaqueline Seeley: “It’s really hard to look for a job, and you basically do have to settle for Burger King, or Arby’s, or whoever is hiring. Because most of the good jobs you want to put on your resume, aren’t really seeking someone without experience.”

Both Seeley’s supervisor at Rose Schnitzer and Autoworks’ owner, Jake Hammer, say that it helped having non-profits screening and training the interns. Hammer says he would consider paying his own interns, if they worked out as well as Johnny Valenzuela did.

But officials behind the internships say it’s harder – and more expensive – than it looks. Less than two-thirds of the spending on the youth employment program actually winds up in the hands of the teenagers.

Amy Parkhurst is with Worksystems, Inc.

Amy Parkhurst: “There’s a lot behind the scenes for young poeple who are low-income and don’t necessarily have the network of support to make sure that they have a bus pass, that they’re going to get to work on time. So we have 12 different service providers to make sure that this is running smoothly.”

The idea of the program is to set teenagers on a career path.

Being a full-time mechanic is still years away for Johnny Valenzuela. His internship is over and he’s working at a fast-food place to earn money.

Jaqueline Seeley says her internship is an important step – but a small one.  

Meantime, advocates are pushing for more government funding of the internships, after this year’s money runs out. But they’re also interested to hear from business owners, like Jake Hammer at Everett Street Autoworks, who suggest a good intern might be worth spending their own money on. 

OPB’s Barbara Leidl helped with this story.