Premium on Youth

The first of the old alphabet agencies set up to create jobs in the 1930s was F.D.R.'s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which in nine years sent 2.5 million young men to the nation's forests and parklands to cut trails, build fire towers, chop brush and plant nearly 2 billion trees. Last week President Carter proposed in effect to resurrect the CCC as part of a $1.8 billion program to put youths to work.

Of the 7.1 million Americans currently out of work, more than half are under age 24, according to Carter. Joblessness among 16-to 19-year-olds runs 18% or more, v. a national average of 7.5%; in urban ghetto areas the figure skyrockets to 40%. To cut into this widespread unemployment, Carter offered a four-part program that contains something old, something new and more than a little borrowed from previous administrations. His proposals:

> Create a National Youth Conservation Corps, an updated version of the CCC. It would employ jobless Americans under age 24 in cleaning up the national and state parks and forests. It would spend $350 million over the next year and a half, creating 35,000 new jobs.

> Start Youth Community Conservation and Improvement Projects. The Federal Government would grant a total of $250 million over 18 months to states and localities for what Carter vaguely describes as projects to upgrade neighborhoods, both urban and rural. The spending would supposedly generate 30,000 jobs for 16-to 19-year-olds.

> Extend the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 beyond its scheduled expiration date later this year. CETA gathered a host of federal programs under a single administrative umbrella. It provides block grants to state and local governments for public works projects and for placing unemployed Americans of all ages in jobs ranging from puppeteer to policeman. Carter would earmark $900 million in CETA funds to create 138,000 new jobs for disadvantaged youths under 21, including $450 million for "innovative and experimental programs."

> Double the size of the Job Corps, a cornerstone of President Johnson's War on Poverty that was cut back severely under President Nixon. The Job Corps, one of the CETA programs, houses poor youths in camps and dormitories while they are trained for employment. It would get $342 million, creating 40,000 more jobs.

Existing legislation allows Carter to act on some of these proposals immediately. But as a courtesy he is submitting them to Congress, where reaction seems favorable. There is some outside criticism. Murray Weidenbaum, a member of TIME'S Board of Economists, thinks that the President should have provided incentives to businessmen for on-the-job training of youths. More basically, he complains that Carter "has failed to come to grips with the fundamental factor behind teen-age unemployment--the minimum wage law." The AFL-CIO is now campaigning to have the $2.30-an-hour pay floor raised to $3.00. Such a step could well price even greater numbers of unskilled young people out of the job market and into the street. Says a Florida social worker who tries to find work for teen-agers from a poverty-ridden area north of Miami, "It's bad enough now, but if the floor goes up again, the kids simply won't ever get hired."

Meanwhile, job prospects for students fresh out of college are perkier than they have been in years. The College Placement Council reports rises of 47% in job offers for B.A. graduates, 74% for M.A.s, 75% for Ph.D.s. Employment for youth, it seems, is all too literally a matter of degree.

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