This past weekend, students across New Hampshire and the nation celebrated their graduation from high school. Their prospects are much bleaker than they should be.

The official unemployment rate is 8.2 percent. Include those Americans who have given up looking for work, though, and it rises to 14.8 percent. Last month 2.4 million Americans were counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as wanting work, but have given up looking for it.

It is even worse for young Americans. The teen unemployment rate is 24.6 percent. The past two years were the worst for teen employment since World War II, according to Reuters, and going into this summer things look no better.

Shortly after these students entered high school four years ago, a new President and Congress were elected on a promise to fix the economy and get America back to work. But the United States has created only half as many jobs as were lost in the recession that ended two Junes ago.

This month, millions of young Americans graduated from high school (the United States graduates about 3.1 million high school students a year). Two thirds of them can be expected to go to college. The third who look for work will have to compete not only with the more experienced adults who have not regained lost jobs, but with the graduates of 2007-2011 who have not found employment.

For those who go on to college, costs will continue to rise as politicians focus on cutting the interest rate for federal student loans rather than the astronomical and outrageous cost of college itself.

The current administration has claimed to have been working on the economy since this year’s graduates entered the second semester of their freshman year. Now the President says it will take him another term to fix it. What would that mean for the Class of 2012? Well, on the bright side, they would save a lot of money living with mom and dad for the next four years.