A nursing student from Alabama has won Miss America – and used her platform to urge America’s young adults to get back to work.

Abbie Stockard, 22, on Sunday beat 51 other hopefuls to be crowned the winner at the annual pageant in Orlando, Florida, declaring she felt like “the most celebrated girl in the world”.

When asked about employment, Ms Stockard, who won Miss Alabama last year, turned her attention to the declining amount of young people getting jobs following the Covid pandemic.

She said: “I believe we need to encourage those [people] to join the workforce, adapt to new skills and learn to grow in our current workforce and industries we have today.”

Meanwhile, the runner-up, Annette Addo-Yobo, who was the first foreign-born delegate to win Miss Texas, answered a question on immigration. 

She told the judges her parents arrived in the US from Ghana with “two suitcases, a few hundred dollars and a little girl, which was me, in a fur coat.”