Our youngest kid just went off to college today. And he couldn’t have started at a more inauspicious time, or with a more inhospitable job market awaiting him.

The unemployment rate for young people ages 16 through 24 is now at 19.1 percent, the highest level since 1948, when this unhappy stat was first taken.

There just don’t seem to be any good jobs anymore for kids coming out of college.

This is what we and our friends worry about over drinks on Saturday nights. Lots of our friends have recent college grads, with very few options. I know newly minted engineers, smart and reliable, who are out luck, and engineering grads like them used to be able to write their own tickets.

You can’t even tell your kid to go be a teacher anymore, since state after state is cutting back savagely on their school budgets.

All this is new and deeply troubling. It seems clearer every day that this cohort of young adults has little chance of doing better than we did.

Welcome to the first downwardly mobile generation.

So to all those parents out there, who, like my wife and I, were just bidding farewell to our college kids, let’s keep our fingers crossed that they enjoy their college experience and that whenever they come out of college, with or without a degree, that there’s a decent place for them to land.

Because there sure isn’t today.

If you liked this story by Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, check out his article “Enough!!! Republicans, Have You No Shame?.”

Follow Matthew Rothschild @mattrothschild on Twitter