The youth unemployment rate is 9.57%. The real annual earnings for individuals with high school diplomas or less have been flat or declining for decades, see here and here.
If there were a high demand for entry level/low skill workers, we would see something different. The youth unemployment rate would be roughly the same as the general unemployment rate and wages for those workers would be rising.
An ever-increasing supply of workers willing to work for very low wages has several effects. First, it lowers the wages of entry level/low skill workers. It increases income inequality. It also distorts the economy by causing more to be invested in activities that exploit that unending supply of entry level/low skill workers. That includes things like hospitality (fast food), construction, agriculture, etc.
That is what we’re seeing. It’s not good for us as a society.
Our Ruling Caste thinks all this is double good. Poor, ignorant people are easier to control.
We have homeless camps in nearly every American city, even small ones. I live outside a small town of 20,000 in rural Ohio, and until a few weeks ago it had two homeless camps. One got eliminated by a brush fire that went through the camp, but the residents just moved on.
We are living in a failed economy and a failed society. Significant parts of our cities are already Third World.
Over in China, they are running AI on ultrafast 5G networks to optimize their already high tech manufacturing sector. The Chinese share of world manufacturing is already one-third of the total, and the next industrial revolution underway there will certainly increase that share.
China has the largest automobile market in the world. They manufacture over 20 million cars and 5 million trucks each year, twice the US output. In fact some US car companies make more cars in China than is the US. But almost all the Chinese production is done by local Chinese companies.
US companies are still playing at AI (and 5G), and seem to be targeting consumer entertainment rather than serious business. Also, the government can’t get its act together, and they’ve yet to allocate the radio bands needed. The military wants to keep them. The FAA thinks the 5G systems will interfere with aircraft operations…