Here's some interesting news items as I get ready to come back from my late spring hiatus.

"Kids from higher income households just aren’t going into the labor market. They’re looking for things to put on résumés, and working at Dairy Queen or Wal-Mart just isn’t going to help you get into Wake Forest or Stanford. And they just don’t need the cash." - An economist on the decline in teenage employment.

In other news, the Worcestershire Youth Cabinet in the United Kingdom is trying to convince local adults they aren't trying to cause trouble - they're just trying to get heard. There was a youth summit in Canton, Ohio last week where topics included recreation, youth employment, gangs, youth violence, drugs and alcohol, education, families, housing, teen pregnancy, respect, and entertainment and the media. Youth Today has exposed that the US federal government's call for orgs to get juvenile justice money wasn't really a competition - they already had their minds made up. My heroes at Future Voters of American are looking to score a HUGE victory in lowering the voting age in New York State. "Ain't no power like the power of the youth cuz the power of the youth don't quit."

Evoke is a new youth-oriented magazine in Canada (but as always, I'll remain suspicious of their intent to market youth culture to youth). In what may become an unfortunate new trend, Newtownabbey, United Kingdom might end their youth council because of an apparent lack of interest by local youth. Summarizing his 15 years experience analyzing it, sociologist Mike Males has called the American Media "a cesspool of anti-youth misinformation." Speaking of which, the Nation magazine is hosting a youth writers contest. A new website called "Its Getting Hot In Here" features "dispatches from the youth climate movement" and offers a variety of posts from across the spectrum, including a recent piece exploring biofuels(!).

The UK Youth Parliament is concerned this month about whether voting will be made mandatory and they continue to shine the light on the British media's phobia against youth. The 2008 CineYouth Festival is on in Chicago and the schedule has been posted. It seems someone has written a (brief) history of the so-called "youth vote" - as if youth vote in a bloc for the same things - but yes, I do get the point. Young people in Jamaica got together in a USAID-funded program to support national development in their country. (It always amazes me to see the US gov't fund youth involvement and youth voice programs overseas, while spending almost no money on them here in the States.)

Finally, from The New York Times, here's a former editor for a big gossip website on why she stopped blogging:

The will to blog is a complicated thing, somewhere between inspiration and compulsion. It can feel almost like a biological impulse. You see something, or an idea occurs to you, and you have to share it with the Internet as soon as possible. What I didn’t realize was that those ideas and that urgency — and the sense of self-importance that made me think anyone would be interested in hearing what went on in my head — could just disappear.

I will be back shortly - that I know.