January 29, 2018 Data Committee Meeting

Audience

Members of the Statewide Task Force and Staff. The public is welcome to attend.

Date/Time

January 29, 2018

9:30am to 11:30am

Location

This meeting will be conducted via teleconference with Chicago & Springfield Locations

Conference Call in:888-330-9549/Code:230540#

Agenda

1. Call to order
2. Roll call
   Kenny Martin Ocasio, Molly Uhe-Edmonds, Quiwana Bell, Jack Wuest, Caitlyn Barnes, Reyahd Kazmi and Maggie Poteau. 
3. Approval of Minutes
   Initial Meeting no minutes to approve. 
4. Focus Points 
   1. Quantify the effects of doing nothing
   2. Cost of violence in terms of medical costs, trauma and other costs
   3. Cost of welfare, jailing and healthcare costs
      • The studies by Dr. Andy Sum at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston has quantified the costs at $290,000 if a student does not earn a high school diploma. The costs were calculated in terms of lost taxes from a lower income, welfare, jailing and healthcare costs.  UIC Great Cities Institute is doing interviews with youth in terms of unemployment and joblessness issues.
      • Can we develop a profile of the impact of violence and labor shortages on youth and young adults?
      • We want to get LGBTQ numbers of youth and young adults who are jobless.
        Molly Uhe will look into data on youth in care in terms of joblessness, LGBTQ numbers of youth, and numbers of youth in care with no high school diploma or a high school diploma. Molly also suggested looking at the numbers of youth who are justice involved. I think these would be numbers not just of youth in care but overall and then we would also want to look at young adults in the system either jailed or involved in the system, ages 18 to 24.
      • We should get the outcomes for youth when they leave care in terms of success or struggles, but I think there are large numbers who at some point are homeless, jobless, struggling with drugs, etc.
        Kenny will work on getting data on LGBTQ youth and maybe broader data on youth and young adults who are homeless.7. I have attaching various documents to this email and a second following email: 
        I am attaching the 4 UIC GCI reports in a 2nd email so it makes it easier to open up both emails because it is a lot of data - Data regarding out of school and jobless youth and young adults and those who do not have a high school diploma in Chicago, Illinois and the country. There are 4 reports that will be attached to a second following email to ensure successful deliver of both emails. I think this gives a broad view of the situation.
      • We are working on a new report with UIC Great Cities Institute to look at jobless and out of school youth as well as those who do not have a high school diploma with the latest data from 2016. It will look at the data for Chicago, Cook County, other major cities in Illinois including Aurora, Rockford, Decatur, Peoria, etc. It will also look at various areas in Illinois across the state which will include rural areas on the western and southern sections of the state.
        Attached are preliminary maps of areas that we are working on to look at the data across Illinois. Please do not circulate these maps because the report is not ready for distribution.
      • Attached in this email are reports by the Brookings Institution, the Atlantic and the American Enterprise Institute detailing the staggering situation of 8 to 10 million men across the country, age 25-54, who are completely out of the labor force. They are not counted as unemployed because they are not looking for work. The terrible and staggering result is that men in this age group are living shorter lives. They are dying earlier which is unheard of in a developed country like ours. Opioids, alcohol, drugs, depression and a range of other kinds of issues are cutting their lives shorter.
      • Labor shortages are growing across the country. Here are six points that are accelerating these shortages:
        • 4,881,522 youth and young adults, 16 to 24, who are jobless and out of school, particularly youth who have not graduated from high school in 2015 (University of Illinois at Chicago's Great Cities Institute report from June 2017 ).
        • 8 million to 10 million men, 25 to 54, who have completely left the labor force, not looking for work and therefore not counted as unemployed. (The Atlantic, June 2016; Brookings, August 2016; American Enterprise Institute, September 2016).
        • A significant slowdown of immigration which has been a strong boost to the economy with job-ready workers.
        • The baby boomer generation will be retiring in significant numbers - assuming they have enough money to retire.
        • There is a drop in the population of young people, 16-24.
        • The fertility rate for the United States is falling below the replacement level that the country will need. As our most Western European countries, Japan and even China.
      • This mounting labor shortage is not just in terms of skilled workers but workers who can show up on time, get along with people, follow instructions, etc. Having a way to prepare youth and young adults by combining education and work will be critical particularly for those youth and young adults who are out of school and jobless. This could lead to an urgent need to do more job preparation and education programming for these youth because the economy will need job-ready workers or businesses will not be able to expand and therefore the economy will stagnate.
        I have attached in this email some very interesting articles on labor shortages:
        • A Washington Post article from December 28, 2017 which states that businesses cannot find workers and will not expand and this will have a depressing effect on the overall economy.
        • Labor shortages on farms where the American Farm Bureau Federation is detailing the problems that farmers are having finding workers and another article that shows crops rotting in the fields in Oregon because they cannot find workers to harvest the crops.
      • It was decided that Quiwana Bell will be the Data Committee Co-Chair.
   4. New Business
      None Noted
   5. Adjournment
      Meeting was adjourned at 10:19am.