After already banning fast food restaurants, the town of Eastchester, New York has gone one step further, passing new rules banning restaurants that are catagorized as "fast casual."  That includes eateries like Panara Bread, California Pizza Kitchen, Chipotle, and Cosi. Interviewed about the ban, Town Supervisor Anthony S. Colavita passionately defended his courageous stance against these restaurants, saying: "We aren’t going to cheapen the town with fast food or these formula fast-quick casual places"…adding that people can "go get your sandwich in Larchmont" (ostensibly, the freedom-loving yet more "cheap" looking town next door).

Defending the measure, Colavita told a local paper that "the clarifications were necessary because the old lines that once divided sit-down restaurants and fast food are blurring amid the popularity of “hybrids” like Panera that mix quick service with a relaxed dining room."

It must be nice to have Colavita's power–simply outlawing things of which he disapproves. And while we might poke fun at these self-important, small town city officials that present themselves as brave anti-fast food crusaders, there is a serious side to these types of measures: Youth unemployment.

The Wall Street Journal reports that while most news outlets report the youth unemployment rate to be at 16.2 percent, the real number is 22.9 percent.

Perhaps no group has been hit harder by the recession and grinding recovery than the young. The official unemployment rate for those under age 25 is 16.2%, more than double the rate for the population as a whole. In percentage terms, unemployment has fallen far more slowly for young people than for the wider population.

Those figures actually understate the severity of the problem, however. The government only considers people “unemployed” if they’re actively looking for work. People who stop looking—whether they’re retired, in school, raising a family or living on friends’ couches — are instead considered “not in the labor force,” even if they would prefer to work given the opportunity.

When the recession began in December, 2007, 59.2% of the under-25 population was in the labor force, meaning they were either working or looking for work. Today, that figure has fallen to 54.5%. That may not sound like a big drop, but it makes a huge difference. If the so-called participation rate had remained unchanged, there would be 1.8 million more young people in the labor force today than there actually are. Counting those people as unemployed, rather than out of the labor force, would push the unemployment rate up to 22.9%. That’s only a hair better than the 23.9% youth unemployment rate in the euro zone, and has shown only very modest improvement during the recovery.

Why should this matter to burger and french fry-fighting politician Anthony Colavita? Well, Mr. Colavita might take a moment to consider where young people get jobs.  That's right, at the very restaurants the city just banned. That means, for some of the kids in Eastchester, New York, they'll be heading out of town this summer to find work.