Last Thursday (May 30), the Department of Labor announced that they were beginning a “phased pause” of operations at all Job Corps locations nationwide, stating that it would be “an orderly transition for students, staff, and local communities.” In a statement, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeReamer claimed that the program no longer produces “the intended outcomes that students deserve,” adding that “a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis.” The announcement caused an immediate uproar, and has led some to wonder why the government wants to shut Job Corps down.
Job Corps was created in 1964 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War On Poverty”, specifically to combat the rising rate of youth unemployment in the nation with vocational training while improving their basic education skills. It was modeled after past programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps during the era of the Great Depression. Participants are between the ages of 16 to 24 (or older depending on disability requirements), and from low-income backgrounds. Job Corps currently has 121 centers nationwide, with two in Puerto Rico with six regional offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and San Francisco. According to a study done by Mathematica in 2008, they found that it was “the only federal training program… shown to increase earnings for this [disadvantaged youth] population.”
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The program has come under fire in the past for being costly. President Richard Nixon sought to shrink the program during his time in office, and President Ronald Reagan sought to eliminate it during his years in the White House, but he faced bipartisan pushback in Congress. That same support was evident last week, as Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) defended the program. “I urged Secretary Chavez-DeRemer to resume enrollment at Maine’s two Job Corps centers and to reverse the Department’s proposed elimination of the Job Corps program,” Collins said, adding that as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee that she’ll “continue to work to support this valuable program.”
Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) also blasted the decision. “Congress appropriated funding for Job Corps, and the Trump Administration can’t just decide to not spend it because they want to make room for tax cuts for billionaires,” she said, noting the DOL’s remarks that their pause aligns with the current “big, beautiful bill” to create a new fiscal budget which aims to kick millions off of Medicaid as well as restrict federal judges’ oversight and rulings against the Trump administration.
