Job Skills and Minority Youth: New Program Directions (Book Review)

Job Skills and Minority Youth: New Program Directions is motivated by the high unemployment rate of minority youth in the United States and the long lasting implications early unemployment can have on future employment and wages. The book starts by describing results from an evaluation of a program designed to address this issue—the After School Matters (ASM) program, targeted towards students in Chicago Public Schools. This book is written at a nontechnical level with broad audiences in mind, so anyone with an interest in programs to reduce youth unemployment would likely benefit from reading it. Most citations are kept in footnotes, and technical details about the evaluation are left to the book’s appendix.