In the 1990s, Chicano youth gang involvement continued to rise across the country, as the result of both the expansion of cocaine markets and widespread socioeconomic changes in the United States. Manufacturing jobs had been decreasing across the U.S. for over twenty years, and as the American economy turned increasingly turned toward the technological and service industries, unemployment rates among young men of color soared in urban areas. Unable to find work in this changing economy, drug markets became the only source of survival for these displaced workers, as the rising prices for crack cocaine became a way for desperate youth to make money. Over time, however, drug markets were monopolized by organized gangs, which actively recruited increasingly younger Black and Chicano youth. Traditional American pathways away from a "gangster lifestyle," such as marriage, family, and stable employment, were largely unavailable to these youth, and in many Black, Chicano, and immigrant communities, gang influence emerged as "a dominant informal control and socialization force."