The applicant must provide the weighted average
unemployment rate (rounded to one decimal place) of the
target community to be served, as identified by zip codes,
compared to the national unemployment rate as of the latest
available comparable data. This data is broken into two youth
age subsets: 16 – 19 and 20 – 24. Applicants must average the
unemployment rate for these two age groups by adding the
populations together and then dividing by the total population.
If applicants are serving a community that spans more than one
zip code, they must add each age group’s unemployed
population numbers together for each zip code and divide the
total by the total population of 16‐24 year olds for all the zip
codes combined to find the weighted unemployment rate for
the combined target community. Applicants must use Bureau of
Labor Statistics data for the national unemployment rate and
for the local areas to be served. This data can be found through
the U.S. Census’ Web site at:
http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml
. The national unemployment rate for youth ages 16–24 against
which DOL will evaluate applicants is: 20.4 percent (using 5‐
year American Community Survey (ACS) estimates as of 2014).
