FORWARD! HOPE! CHANGE! Illinois Youth Called a "Lost Generation" as Unemployment Reaches Record Levels

How much more misery will Illinois' beleaguered "middle class" tolerate before throwing out the Democrat bums who led them into this rat-hole?

Quite a bit more, if history's any guide.

The 2012 Illinois legislative drive to increase the state’s minimum wage

Illinois is tied with Connecticut and Nevada having the fourth highest minimum wage in the country at $8.25 an hour. Illinois’ rate is a dollar higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 and the highest in the Midwest... most states adhere to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

In short, each time the Democrat masterminds try to engineer society, they fail. Miserably.

The Great Recession and the post-recession years have hurt all Americans, but one group particularly hit hard has been teens. From 2002 through 2007, before the recession, an average of 37.08 percent of Illinois teens aged 16 to 19 were employed. The unemployment rate averaged 16.2 percent, with a low in 2006 of 11.5 percent.

...The average unemployment rate for those 16 to 19 years old increased by a stunning 8.15 percentage points, to a recession and post-recession average of 24.35 percent. The unemployment rate more than doubled from 2006-11. The unemployment rate peaked in 2010 at 26.9 percent, a 15.4 percentage-point increase from its low of 11.5 percent in 2006. And as the job market worsened, the average hours teens worked per week fell from a pre-recession average of 8.3 to a recession and post-recession average of 6.65, a 25 percent drop...

"For three decades, we've sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning. And the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan." --Ronald Reagan