It’s time for another “President Donald Trump outrages bipartisan group with budget cuts” story for the media to run with, this time regarding Job Corps.
The headlines speak again of chaos. The Hill: “Labor Department suspends Job Corps centers operations, drawing bipartisan pushback.” CBS News: “Thousands of students in limbo as Trump administration seeks to shut down Job Corps centers.” The Nation: “How the White House’s War on the Job Corps Is Hurting Trump Country.” The Seattle Medium: “Killing Jobs Corps Is Killing Equity.”
It gets more febrile the more left you get on the spectrum, but The Hill is probably the most balanced of these sources — and provides the neatest, if somewhat reduced, explanation of just what’s going on.
The Department of Labor announced last month that it was beginning a “phased pause” in the Job Corps program, with Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer saying the program wasn’t achieving “the intended outcomes that students deserve” and highlighting “a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis.”
“We remain committed to ensuring all participants are supported through this transition and connected with the resources they need to succeed as we evaluate the program’s possibilities,” she said.
Job Corps, as The Hill’s report noted, was “established as part of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964” and “is a free residential education and job training program for low-income people between 16 and 24 years of age.”
Job Corps: real people, training for real opportunities. Learn more about our free career training for eligible students ages 16-24 today. pic.twitter.com/HNXDPTluWg
— Job Corps (@DOLJobCorps) January 30, 2021
To the extent that there was “bipartisan” opposition to this, however, it’s so seldom a good sign when the first quote from a prominent Republican protesting the pause was Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of the last true RINOs still in the wild in the upper chamber.
“Serving nearly 500 students in Maine, the Loring Job Corps Center and the Penobscot Job Corps Center have become important pillars of support for some of our most disadvantaged young adults,” she said.
“That’s why at an Appropriations hearing just last week, 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.”
The Hill’s report went on to dutifully include a quote from Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin followed by a short quote from the Department of Labor in the next-to-last paragraph noting the “significant financial challenges” the Job Corps faces. Keep that in mind for later, because 1) those challenges are indeed quite significant and 2) talk about burying the lede.
Fast forward to last week, and The Hill was reporting on how the “Trump administration faces growing bipartisan pressure over Job Corps.”
The “bipartisan” nature of this was supposed to be underscored by the fact that “[n]early 200 House members signed onto a bipartisan letter this week to express support for Job Corps after the Department of Labor recently announced it would soon be pausing operations at centers nationwide.”
The number of Republicans who signed onto the letter was unsurprisingly quite small, and it was almost all Democrats, but the point is that, you know, there were some. That justified the headline, apparently.
“Nearly 20,000 young people utilize Job Corps to learn skills for in-demand vocational and technical job training,” the letter read.
“Job Corps is one of the few national programs that specifically targets the 16-24-year-old population that is neither working, nor in school, and provides them with a direct pathway into employment openings in industries such as manufacturing and shipbuilding.”
“By filling job openings, Job Corps ensures that young people become productive members of the American workforce. No other program takes homeless youth and turns them into the welders, electricians, shipbuilders, carpenters, nurses, mechanics, and vocational workers of the future.
“As companies continue to onshore and invest in the men and women of our country, a steady stream of skilled laborers will be required to meet the growing workforce demand. The Job Corps program is uniquely positioned to fill that role and provide these hardworking young Americans with the vocational and technical job training that will set them and our country up for success.”
While it’s indeed good to see that the Democrats of Congress are getting behind President Trump’s plans to onshore American jobs, how oddly felicitous to see them do it when it involves a government entitlement program that sounds OK in theory.
And, indeed, they’re currently pressuring the Trump administration through the courts, their favorite channel for this sort of thing when the normal legislative pathways are blocked. On Wednesday, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter temporarily blocked the Job Corps shutdown, at least temporarily giving a victory to the plaintiffs, which included the National Job Corps Association.
Their suit claims that the shutdown is illegal: “It contravenes the statutory provisions governing Job Corps and DOL’s own regulations concerning the program, and it is fundamentally irrational,” the plaintiffs said. “Shuttering Job Corps will have disastrous, irreparable consequences, including displacing tens of thousands of vulnerable young people, destroying companies that have long operated Job Corps centers in reliance on the Government’s support for the program, and forcing mass layoffs of workers who support the program.”
You may have noticed a whole lot of verbiage being spilled over the “bipartisan” pressure to restore Job Corps funding, the court challenge to the shutdown, and just some desultory mentions of the “significant financial challenges” the program faces, along with it not achieving “the intended outcomes that students deserve” and the “startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis.”
The last part is key, because do you know how much each Job Corps graduate costs the U.S. taxpayer? Steel yourselves, America: $155,600.74.
No, I didn’t misplace a decimal point. That’s one-hundred-and-fifty-five-thousand six-hundred dollars and seventy-four cents.
Nor is it viable going forward, at least under the current model: “The Job Corps program has faced significant financial challenges under its current operating structure,” a Department of Labor media release read.
“In [program year] 2024, the program operated at a $140 million deficit, requiring the Biden administration to implement a pause in center operations to complete the program year. The deficit is projected to reach $213 million in PY 2025.”
That problem was amplified by a startling number of infractions for the last program year: 14,913.
This included 1,764 acts of violence, 1,167 “breaches of safety or security,” 2,702 incidents of drug use, and 372 incidents of “inappropriate sexual behavior and sexual assaults reported.”
All this for a Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act-defined average graduation rate of 38.6 percent and yearly cost per student of $80,284.65.
This is what there’s “bipartisan” support for continuing?
Nobody on the conservative side is against people pursuing the trades as a career, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. What they’re concerned about, obviously, is both the sustainability and efficacy of the Job Corps — which isn’t exactly convincing anyone that big government can also deliver the goods when it comes to blue-collar careers.
This is hardly mentioned in the reporting, and even if it is, it’s usually in passing — certainly not in context of the eye-popping numbers when it comes to cost-per-graduate and infractions among Job Corps participants. Nor is the fatuousness of the “bipartisan” opposition ever fully discussed in terms of predictably RINO-ish GOP congressmembers issuing mild, boilerplate statements of reproach that will amount to nothing.
It remains to be seen whether or not judges will continue to block the elimination of the Job Corps. Given its history of underperformance and overspending, however, we shouldn’t bemoan its loss if and when it gets eliminated. Rest assured, there are better ways to train American youth for blue-collar jobs. A country that is $37 trillion in debt cannot afford this.
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