An estimated 5.5 million young Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 are neither enrolled in school nor participating in the workforce — a crisis of disconnection that a new report argues demands far more than the piecemeal policy responses that have characterized the nation's approach for decades.
The report, "Reconnecting Opportunity Youth to Work and a Future," published this month by the American Enterprise Institute, offers a sweeping analysis of what researchers and practitioners call "opportunity youth" — a population that cuts across race, geography, and circumstance, but shares a common condition: disconnection from the two institutions most likely to launch a young person into a stable adult life.
Bruno V. Manno
The report arrives at a moment of heightened anxiety about youth economic mobility, workforce readiness, and the long-term consequences of educational disruption. Its findings draw on longitudinal research from the RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, the Educational Testing Service, and the American Institutes for Research, painting a portrait of a population too often misunderstood and too often underserved.
One of the report's central arguments is that opportunity youth resist easy categorization. Some are caregivers for family members. Others are recovering from trauma or have been pushed out of school through suspensions or other disciplinary actions. Still others are working — just not in ways that show up in traditional employment data. They cycle through gig shifts, off-the-books labor, and part-time arrangements that provide income but no trajectory.
RAND Corporation research cited in the report found that young people who eventually became disconnected were already showing signs of academic and social struggle in middle and high school, reporting higher rates of depression, substance use, and weaker support networks long before they dropped out of education or the workforce.
Critically, the report challenges the assumption that disconnection is simply a function of not finishing high school. RAND data show that many disconnected young people already hold at least a diploma, undercutting the argument that boosting graduation rates alone will solve the problem. Place, the report emphasizes, matters just as much as credentials. Disconnection rates are significantly higher in communities where fewer adult men are employed, a finding that reframes the issue as a neighborhood condition, not merely an individual failure.
An Educational Testing Service cohort study of millennials found that disconnection does not diminish with age. Rather, it compounds. The share of disconnected young people grew from 1 percent at age 18 to 5 percent at age 20 and 12 percent by age 26. Among those still disconnected at 26, roughly one-third had dropped out of the labor force entirely.
The report's most striking finding is its attention to young people who occupy the difficult middle ground between full disconnection and economic stability — what researchers describe as the "precariously connected."
A Brookings Institution analysis of employment and earnings pathways among adults ages 18 to 31 found that about 22 percent of the study population fell into a category of extreme economic hardship. By age 30, more than half of that group lived in poverty with very low employment rates. Another 36 percent were classified as the working poor, earning an average of $19,000 a year by age 30, with half working less than full-time.
"Many young people are not fully disconnected from the workforce," the report states. "They are precariously connected — working but not building a future."
Drawing on interviews with 21 state and local practitioners conducted by researchers at the American Institutes for Research and the Brookings Institution, the report outlines four core components that effective opportunity youth programs must include: education and training aligned with real employer demand; work-based learning such as internships, pre-apprenticeships, and apprenticeships; career navigation and placement support; and direct assistance with basic needs including childcare, transportation, stipends, and legal support.
The report is pointed in its critique of programs that ignore the practical friction young people face in accessing services. "For many participants, the barrier isn't motivation," Manno writes. "It's the friction that adds up to death by a thousand small obstacles. A pathway that ignores friction is not a pathway. It's a shiny brochure."
Apprenticeships receive particular attention as a model capable of addressing multiple barriers simultaneously. Unlike traditional training programs, earn-and-learn apprenticeships allow young people to receive wages while building skills and establishing mentoring relationships with employer supervisors. The report cites a January 2026 analysis from the think tank New America — "Connected and Thriving: Youth Apprenticeship and Opportunity Youth" — which frames youth apprenticeship as an especially promising vehicle for restoring momentum among disconnected young people.
But the report cautions against viewing apprenticeships as a cure-all. Their effectiveness, Manno argues, depends entirely on whether communities can do the difficult work of aligning schools, employers, workforce development boards, and support systems into coherent regional networks.
The report reserves some of its sharpest criticism for the metrics by which opportunity youth programs are typically judged. Enrollment counts, completion rates, and job placement figures — the standard benchmarks used by funders and policymakers — tell only a fraction of the story, Manno argues. What is needed, he contends, is a shift in focus from job placement to job trajectory, a reorientation that would require longer-term career navigation, mentoring networks treated as outcomes rather than add-ons, and robust program data infrastructure that enables continuous learning rather than mere compliance.
"These aren't soft ideas," the report states. "They are operational requirements for persistence."
The report calls for what it describes as a "no wrong door" system — one in which a young person can access support through a community college, a youth-serving nonprofit, a workforce board, or a high school reengagement center, with partners sharing a common approach and a common navigator assigned to help that young person move across fragmented systems.
Manno frames the opportunity youth challenge not only as a workforce policy problem but as a measure of national character.
"If we can't design pathways that a 19-year-old with bills, stress, and limited networks can navigate," he writes, "then our celebrated opportunity culture is mostly a story for the already connected."
The report stops well short of endorsing any single legislative remedy, instead calling for what it describes as "the boring yet essential work of building the on-ramp." That work, it argues, requires coherent pathways, real-world experience, navigators who stay with young people through turbulence, and a civic commitment to reducing friction — not lecturing young people about resilience.
