Job Corps is a program administered by the United States Department of Labor that offers free education and vocational training to young people ages 16 to 24.
[1][2][3] Job Corps' mission is to help young people ages 16 through 24 improve the quality of their lives through vocational and academic training aimed at gainful employment and career pathways.
[4] The Job Corps was originally designed by a task force established by Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz reporting to Manpower Administrator Sam Merrick.
[5] In 1962, the youth unemployment rate was twice the non-youth unemployment rate and the purpose of the initiative was to create a program whereby Youth members of the program could spend half of their time improving national parks and forests and the other half of their time improving their basic education skills which were severely limiting their occupational accomplishments.
[citation needed] Job Corps was therefore initiated as the central program of the Johnson Administration's War on Poverty, part of his domestic agenda known as the Great Society.
[citation needed] The first National Director of the Job Corps program was Dr. S. Stephen Uslan, who was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson and reported directly to Sargent Shriver.
Career Transition Specialists assist with job placement or searches, and provide support and referrals for housing, transportation, and other essential components of living needed by the former student to obtain and retain employment.
Example careers include machinist, auto mechanic, electrician, 911 dispatcher, dental assistant, corrections officer, cook, computer technician, landscaper, and truck driver.
[3][23] From 1993 to 2008, Princeton University affiliate research organization Mathematica produced a series of evaluations and reports on the Job Corps for the agency's parent, the U.S. Department of Labor, and for independent academic journals.
"[2] In 2009, during the Obama administration, the conservative Heritage Foundation political think-tank described the program's 40-year history as a "record of failure" -- citing specific findings from that Mathematica journal article, including that Job Corps participants were less likely than non-participants to "earn a high school diploma"; not any more likely to complete, or even attend, college; and earnings of Job Corps participants were essentially the same as a "control group" of similar non-participants.
[10] CBS interviewed a former Albuquerque center teacher who alleged that welding students who failed to attend training were given welding-competence certificates, anyway, to take into the workforce.
[10] A CBS affiliate in Milwaukee checked records on their local Job Corps center, and found 11 police reports between 2012-2014, including a knife attack and a student shot.
[31] In 2017, with per-student costs ranging from $15,000 to $45,000, President Trump's Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta, stated that the $1.7 billion annually budgeted program "requires fundamental reform" -- not just "changes at the margins," but "large-scale changes.