Audio Slide Show: College Grads Take Employment Plight to Capitol Hill

Last week, members of the advocacy group 80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs held a summit at the U.S. Capitol on behalf of their generation -- the millennials, born between roughly 1976 and 1996. (Click here to read The Cram's previous coverage of the July 14-15 event.)

After a day of speakers and small break-out sessions, the group developed a federal legislative agenda to revive the U.S. economy. (Click to read Guidelines & Principles and Policy Areas voted on at the summit.)

The primary goal was to call attention to issues affecting millennials, such as unemployment and student debt. The images and interviews in the video below provide a glimpse of the varied attendees and issues represented:


According to Maya Enista, CEO of Mobilize.org and 80 Million Strong co-chair, young people are leaving college with an average debt of $27,000, and 30 percent lack adequate health care coverage. Caitlin Howarth, another co-chair and policy director of the Roosevelt Institution, urged Congress to take action.

"Millennials are severely underemployed," said Howarth. "If policymakers do not act now to counteract the student loan debt crisis and millennial unemployment, the negative impacts will be felt for decades to come through lost earnings and extended periods of unemployment."

Matthew Segal, also an 80 Million Strong co-chair as well as executive director of the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE), acknowledges that it's going to take money: "But like the Obama administration has said, this is an investment. Ultimately these young people are going to create market value anyway, so if we invest in them now, they're going to pay it back much more and then some over time."

Segal noted, "If we say we value public service in this country, then we ought to fund it."

The next step, he said, is for young people to be leaders at the grass-roots level and ensure that their peers become just as engaged. As one participant put it, "We're not going away."