The Young and the Jobless

Sept. 23, 2009, 10:39 a.m. EDT

Students in the CareerOne program at the Central Minnesota Work Force Center do landscaping and cleaning around Lake George in St. Cloud, Minn., on June 25, 2009. (Jason Wachter/ProPublica) Today's roundup of stimulus coverage:

The $1.2 billion in federal stimulus money spent to help teenagers find jobs this summer was a whopping failure, reports the Associated Press. Less than a quarter of the 279,169 youths in the program landed a job, as the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds soared to 18.5 percent -- the highest level since just after World War II.

But it’s a good time to be in construction, reports BusinessWeek. According to the Associated Builders and Contractors trade group, the construction backlog for July rose to just over six months, an 8.9 percent increase. The backlog is a way of measuring how much work construction companies have, and much of it is coming from infrastructure projects, reports Chris Palmeri.

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