New Census data for 2024 was released on September 11, 2025, and Community Solutions has already begun digging into the new numbers. Of particular interest were new insights in a niche table about youths aged 16-19. Concerning patterns have emerged in the post-pandemic years among the 28,222 females and 29,054 males in Cuyahoga County within this age group.
As part of a community health needs assessment, I recently had the privilege of hearing from over a hundred high schoolers about their thoughts on being healthy, what was stressing them out, and how they coped with their stresses. The experience really stuck with me, in part because I’ve never felt so old, sitting at a folding table trying to convince bored high schoolers that their perspectives are super important. But mostly because it got me thinking about how difficult high school can be, a pivotal time where kids must prepare for a rapidly approaching adulthood.
Measuring rates of ‘Engaged’ Youth
A crude but insightful way to explore this transitional period is to measure the percentage of youth aged 16-19 who are either
- actively enrolled in any kind of school, or
- have graduated with their diploma/high school equivalency and are participating in the labor force (either working or actively looking for work)
Both segments of these youth can be categorized in shorthand as engaged.[i] The Census affords the ability to explore the percentage of engaged youth both historically and by gender.
In Cuyahoga County, the percent of engaged female and male youths from 2017-2021 were remarkably similar, hovering around 93-94 percent for females, and 92-93 percent for males. In 2023, the percentage of engaged females and males both dropped to their lowest rates since 2017 (91.6 percent and 88.6 percent respectively).
According to the new 2024 data, however, female youth engagement has rebounded to its highest rate yet of 96.1 percent, while the male youth engagement rate has continued to sink, now 86.6 percent.
What used to be a consistently small difference of roughly one percentage point between female and male youth engagement for 16–19-year-olds, has ballooned in the last year to a 9.5 percentage point difference.
It's good news that most youth 16-19 in Cuyahoga County can be categorized as ‘engaged,’ but the recent downward trend for males merits further exploration. While the new census data offers some insights for the 13.4 percent of males and 3.9 percent of females who don’t fall into this ‘engaged’ category, it would not be accurate to label them as ‘disengaged.’
Youth taking part in the labor force without their diplomas
There is a small percentage of youth aged 16-19 (2.6 percent of males and 1.7 percent of females) in Cuyahoga County who have left school and are currently in the labor force, prior to finishing their diploma. These young workers are certainly ‘engaged.’ However, it’s important to highlight these 1,240 workers who have not yet finished their high school educations; they are at a higher risk of negative health outcomes, limited employment prospects, and poverty. There isn’t much difference between females and males in this category.
Youth with diplomas who aren’t actively in the labor force
Another subsect of these 16–19-year-olds do have their high school diplomas or equivalencies but are not currently participating in the labor force. The census offers zero insight as to why these youth are not working or looking for work, but reasons could include providing care for a child or family member, taking a gap year to apply for college, or being unable to work due to disability. It’s of note that in the last year, the percentage of female youth in this category dropped from 6.4 percent in 2023 to 1.9 percent in 2024, while for males this rate rose from 4.6 percent to 6.7 percent.
Youth who aren’t in school or the labor force, and who don’t have a diploma
The final group of 16–19-year-olds in Cuyahoga County important to highlight, is the estimated 100 females and 1,168 males who
- Are not in school
- Don’t have a high school diploma/equivalency, and
- Are not participating in the labor force
In 2022, the gap between the percentage of females and males who fell into this category was less than half a percentage point. But since then, this rate has declined to 0.4 percent for females and increased to 4.0 percent for males.
Perspectives and final thoughts
Perspective is important here. We’re talking about relatively small percentages of 16–19-year-olds in Cuyahoga County who would benefit from assistance with completing their education and/or finding employment. We’re also relying on one-year census data, which has larger margins of error than five-year estimates, and must be thought of as estimates.
On the other hand, we’re also not measuring the quality of work the employed youths of Cuyahoga County are engaging with. As Emily Muttillo recently wrote in an article for Labor Day, employment alone does not equal stability. And despite the most recent data showing that young males are falling behind their female peers, this certainly doesn’t erase the barriers and disadvantages women experience with gainful employment. Two things can be true at once.
Instead, this should serve as a potential early warning sign of a widening gap between young females and males in Cuyahoga County.
The 2024 gap seems to be largely driven by the substantial increase in the percent of young males with high school diplomas who were not participating in the labor force, as well as a steady increase in the number of males since 2022 without a diploma nor any participation in the labor force. This could just be an anomaly from a single year’s worth of data, but the size of the gap between 13.4 percent (males) and 3.9 percent (females) is particularly concerning. Especially so, considering that as recently as 2021, that difference was only 1.5 percentage points.
Perhaps the next time I’m sitting at a folding table, begging bored high school students to share their opinions, I’ll ask the boys to tell me about their plans after they graduate, or what’s keeping them in school.
[i]The University of Wisconsin Public Health Institute’s County Health Rankings program measures the opposite of this, meaning youth who are not in school nor in the labor force, and labels them “Disconnected Youth”. While the data in this article have been measured and reported differently, the County Health Rankings methodology still provided the foundation for this analysis.
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