If  you’re a young American adult (the 25-to-34 age range), and you have a good job, count yourself blessed. Most of your peers aren’t so lucky. The New York Times reports that “[o]ver the last 12 years, the United States has gone from having the highest share of employed 25- to 34-year-olds among large, wealthy economies to having among the lowest.”

Of course, young Europeans have been dealing with this for years. Greece, Spain and Portugal have unemployment rates between 17-27% (Greece being the highest), and the outlook is grim for most of the European Union (EU). Even taking into account that many young people may be studying or raising families and therefore not looking for full-time work, the deterioration of the EU’s economies is obvious. But it’s not just lack of jobs. As Samuel Gregg, Acton’s Director of Research, points out in his book Becoming Europe, “Europe’s social systems are under consider­able internal strain from the remorseless deterioration associated with unaffordable welfare states, population decline, low produc­tivity levels, and the preferential treatment of politically connected insiders.” Read more on Idle Young Americans: Are We Becoming Europe?…

Record unemployment rates in Europe have been published and they should alarm Americans. Why? Because we are headed in the same direction. Nile Gardiner, of The Telegraph, is quite sure of this:

Read more on New E-Zone Unemployment Rates Should Raise American Alarm…

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a group that works exclusively for the U.S. Congress, issued a report with one of the greatest titles I’ve ever seen on a government document:

Receipt of Unemployment Insurance by Higher-Income Unemployed Workers (“Millionaires”)

Now the first nine words are nothing special, typical policy-wonk speak. But whoever added in the word “millionaires” with scare quotes and parentheses is a genius. Most people would have been nodding off around the word “Insurance” but seeing millionaires (that’s such a quaint word nowadays) in the title makes you wake up and ask, “Wait, are they saying that millionaires got unemployment insurance?”

The answer: Yes. Yes they did. Millionaires have indeed been getting unemployment insurance. In fact, almost 3,000 of them in 2008 were on the dole:
Read more on Did 2,362 Millionaires Get Unemployment Checks in 2009? (Answer: Yes they did.)…

“Unless incentives suddenly stopped mattering during this recession, says Casey B. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, “it appears that the expanding social safety net explains some of the excess nonemployment among unmarried women who are heads of households.”
Read more on Marital Status and the Social Safety Net…

In my commentary this week, I reflect on the unemployment rate of many newly separated military veterans of our Armed Forces. The grim jobs outlook affects our reservists and National Guard forces too. As You Were, a book I reviewed on the PowerBlog in late 2009, touched on this topic quite a bit.

Read more on Playing Politics with Unemployed Veterans…

In last week’s Acton Commentary, “Food Fights and Free Enterprise,” I take a look at the food truck phenomenon in US cities, sometimes called a “craze.”

In the companion blog post, “Food Trucks and First Steps,” I refer to Milton Friedman’s observation that there is a difference between being pro-market and pro-business. Art Carden has more on this over at Forbes.

Read more on Faith and Food Trucks…

Congress insults our intelligence when it tells us that Chinese currency games are to blame for our trade deficit with that country and unemployment in our own. Legislators might as well propose a fleet of men-o’-war to navigate the globe and collect all its gold: economics is not a zero-sum game.

Read more on Trade with China, or Blockade Their Ports?…

Acton’s director of research Samuel Gregg has a piece over at The American Spectator that may surprise big government liberals. (We know you read this blog.) In “Free Market Sweden, Social Democratic America,” he lays out the history of Sweden’s social democracy — its nature and its effects on the country’s economy — and then draws lessons for the United States. The Scandinavian country isn’t quite the pinko nanny state Americans like to look down upon, and we’ve missed their reforms of the last two decades.

Read more on Samuel Gregg: Imitate Sweden’s Economic Liberation, Not Her Failed Socialism…

Writing in today’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute:

Jobs & deficits — the moral equation

By Rev. Robert A. Sirico

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Read more on Rev. Sirico: ‘Jobs & deficits — the moral equation’…

My latest for Acton Commentary. I’m also adding a couple of videos from Hotep and the Institute for Justice.

Let the Hustlers Hustle

By Anthony Bradley

If necessity is the mother of invention, then there is nothing worse than quenching the entrepreneurial spirit of people seeking to improve their situation by imposing arbitrary third-party constraints. America’s unemployment problems linger because hustlers cannot hustle.

Read more on Let the Hustlers Hustle…