increased from 41 percent to 90 percent; for Hispanics the current figure is 45 percent. Teenage mothers are half as likely to graduate from high school as are other girls. The children of "child-mothers" generally have lower achievement scores, are more likely to repeat school grades, and are more frequently on welfare than other children.

Though today's labor market is tightening, the economic situation facing young adults as a group is improving because a smaller cohort of young people is entering the market. But because of the increasing skill requirements of jobs in all sectors of the economy, the cost of being poorly prepared for work is much higher than it was a decade or two ago. The problem today is not so much a lack of jobs, but rather a growing mismatch between the skill requirements of jobs and the skills that many young people bring to the labor market.

Experience has shown that skill training is not all that is required to reach many young people who are completely disconnected from our institutions of education and work. Reaching these youths requires finding ways to motivate them to have goals in life and to aspire to success. It also involves helping some of them obtain treatment and overcome problems related to alcohol and drug addiction. We should not underestimate the difficulty of these challenges.

The trends outlined above represent an immense challenge to the American systems of education, training, and social welfare—systems that are grounded in the concepts of work and personal effort. Through gainful employment, Americans expect and are expected by society to be able to make their way in the world and to build the first line of defense against the inevitable hazards of life. To enter adulthood unprepared for the world of work is to see access to opportunities and job-related protections slipping away.