Publications

Teenage Unemployment: What's the Local Story?

In this lesson, students will respond to a request from their principal to provide unemployment data on the school's working age teens. The students will conduct a survey to simulate the process used by the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in producing the monthly jobs report. Students will use the survey data to calculate the labor force, labor force participation rate, the unemployment rate, and to sort survey respondents into a variety of unemployment categories. After students understand the categories into which survey respondents are sorted, they will write a press release announcing their results and create and perform a short role play demonstrating their understanding of the categories used by the BLS.

Lesson Components

• Procedures 
• Presentation 
• Notebook files