On the Thursday, July 30, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: Millions of young adults in the U.S. are not working, not in school and not in training. RAND senior economist Jennie Wenger joins The Excerpt to discuss why some 18-24-year-olds become disconnected, how poverty and place shape opportunity and why community ties can play a major role in helping young people find a path forward.
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Dana Taylor:
Your late teens
and early 20s are supposed to be the launchpad for the rest of your life. There's high school, maybe college, first jobs, training, maybe the start of a career, but for millions of young adults in the US, that launch is simply stalled. They're not working, they're not in school and not in training. The question is why? Hello, and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, July 30th, 2026. RAND Senior Economist Jenny Winger is part of a team of researchers who undertook the mission to find out why. Jenny, thank you so much for joining me on The Excerpt.
Jenny Winger:
Happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Let's start with the basics. When we talk about young adults who are disconnected, who are we talking about? How many are there? And then what does that disconnection look like?
Jenny Winger:
So the definition of disconnection is not in school, not in training and not employed. We look at 18 to 24-year-olds, and we find that there are millions, millions of young people at any point in time who are disconnected by this definition. About one in every seven, 18 to 24-year-olds, in fact, is not working, not in training, not in school.
Dana Taylor:
Are young women and men experiencing this disconnection equally?
Jenny Winger:
Roughly equally. The rate is a bit higher among young men, but young women also experience significant amounts of disconnection. It may be for different reasons. We don't really understand all the reasons yet, but it's a significant problem for both.
Dana Taylor:
And then what factors are at play here? Are we talking about race, economic class? What else?
Jenny Winger:
Yes, poverty, community poverty, region. There's a rural and urban divide, and there's also some regions of the country that have particularly high rates of disconnection.
Dana Taylor:
Your research focused on the 18 to 24 age range. Why is that such a critical period for young people? And also, why can't young people connect at 25 or 26?
Jenny Winger:
Sure. And there are different definitions of disconnection. For instance, the European countries do track people through their mid-20s. They use the term NEET or not in education, employment or training. 24 is not necessarily a magic number. However, we look at 18 to 24-year-olds because that encompasses the period when people leave high school, when they at least begin college. It gives them up to six years to obtain their education and training after leaving high school. And this tends to be a period when young people get the vast amount of education and training that they're going to get. But the 18 to 24-year-old period usually encompasses most education and training and the initial job or jobs that a person has. And we know that that transition period is really important. In fact, entering the economy during a recession, for example, will have decades of effects on young people. Those first jobs and those training years are very important for their future success and stability.
Dana Taylor:
Jenny, what did your research discover as to why this is happening? Is there one big reason to blame or are there a lot of little ones to blame here?
Jenny Winger:
There are a lot of reasons. We've had disconnected youth for decades. This is not a brand new phenomenon in the United States. We definitely had a pretty big turmoil during the pandemic, but today's rate of disconnection is not all that different than it was, say, during 2005, 2010, 2015. However, I would point out the rate of high school graduation has increased a lot in the last 20 years. The rate of teen pregnancy has decreased. These are both factors that we would expect to decrease the rate of disconnection, but we still see a rate of disconnection quite similar to what we saw 20 or 25 years ago. So that suggests while education is certainly a factor and completing high school or getting some college decreases the likelihood that you'll be disconnected. There seem to be other factors at play here. I mean, we've seen a lot of change in the labor market, perhaps particularly for young people. We've seen some disruptions. So I don't think there's any one thing that we could change that would completely solve disconnection.
Dana Taylor:
Older generations tend to think of youth getting stalled in life as a matter of individual choice, but your research highlighted the strong role of community in young people's lives. Tell me more about that.
Jenny Winger:
One of the pieces that my co-author, Stephanie Bonds and I wrote recently looked at the rate of disconnection within different communities. So we were comparing between urban communities and rural communities, communities with higher persistent rates of poverty. We were looking at certain regions of the country, for instance, Appalachian, Ozarks, rural South versus other areas. And we found, not surprisingly, that persistent poverty, communities with persistent poverty have higher rates of disconnection. But we also found that in the communities that have stronger connectivity across the economic spectrum, where people are more likely to have relationships with people who are not like them in terms of their say household income and wealth, those communities have lower rates of youth disconnection. And that's kind of a wordy way to say that. But what we think that means is that young people with opportunities often come from their communities. And if they have stronger networks in their communities and their families have stronger networks in their communities, that improves their outcomes and we see lower rates of disconnection in those communities.
Dana Taylor:
There's a lot of anxiety about the labor market right now, especially with AI. What does that look like for young people right now?
Jenny Winger:
Well, I would put it the way you did exactly. There's a lot of anxiety about the labor market. The unemployment rate has gone up among young workers. And I think that the disruptions that we are going to see from AI have not fully come to fruition. But we would describe this labor market recently as sort of a frozen labor market. And what that means is, there's not a lot of people leaving jobs, there's not a lot of hiring. I think businesses are sensing the uncertainty, and that has made them pull back a bit on hiring. This is a tough labor market for people who do not have job experience to enter into. So I think that young people's anxiety is completely understandable.
Dana Taylor:
Community colleges and workforce programs are often seen as key solutions, but what else has to be in place for those programs to actually reach young people who are already disconnected?
Jenny Winger:
That's a great question. The evidence that I see is that young people who are disconnected, particularly at the early part of that age range, 18 to 20, the programs that work best for them are wraparound programs. They may offer education and training, but also things like help with resume writing and interviewing. And so we see those programs as being more effective in creating connections for young people.
Dana Taylor:
What should policymakers, local leaders, community institutions understand about this issue that they might be missing?
Jenny Winger:
I do think that one of the more interesting and surprising things we found in our research is that connections across the economic spectrum between people in a community matter. They make a big difference for young people. We don't understand this mechanism completely. It could be that in those communities, mentoring programs are more effective because the adults in the communities have better connections and they can better provide opportunities for young people. It could be something else about the communities that make them a better place for young people to find their first opportunities. But I did find a lot of this research is very individually focused as the individual and we look at their age and we look at young men versus young women, and we look at their education, and those factors are important, but our research suggests that the community is important as well.
Dana Taylor:
And then finally, Jenny, if listeners and viewers think that their friend or family member is part of this disconnected group, what can they do to help?
Jenny Winger:
I would say a number of things. They can encourage young people to take part in some kind of a wraparound program or some kind of a mentoring program. But they can use their networks to try to create opportunities for young people, introduce young people to potential employers or other potential mentors, people who can give them advice about careers. I do think one of the things I've noticed in my own research is that a lot of young people don't have a good understanding of the career landscape, and that can be very helpful to them as they're trying to figure out what kind of training they want to undergo and what kind of careers they want to eventually work in.
Dana Taylor:
Jenny, thank you so much for sharing your insights with me on The Excerpt.
Jenny Winger:
Thank you. It was a pleasure to talk with you.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Make USA TODAY's The Excerpt part of your weekday routine. New episodes are available every weekday morning.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why millions of young adults are stuck before they start | The Excerpt
