Plans to close federal vocational training program risks creating thousands of homeless youths
By the time he was 18, Noah had lived in more foster homes than he could count, passed from family to family from the time he was a two-year-old. There was one year when he lived in more than 20 houses.
Facing homelessness when he aged out of the system, he was given a lifeline when he found a place at Job Corps, the nation's oldest and most prolific vocational job training program for young low-income Americans. Job Corps centers provide housing and schooling for students aged 16 to 24.
'The first thing I said was, 'Oh, I have a bed to sleep in',' said Noah, now 21, who declined to give his last name for fear of breaching Job Corps rules.
In February, he landed at the Job Corps in Guthrie, Oklahoma, one of 99 centers across the country, where he began working towards a certification in carpentry and welding.
But that opportunity – and a safe place to live – is now in limbo.
In the last month, the program has been plunged into uncertainty after the Trump administration ordered its operations to be paused. The move is part of the White House's larger budget cuts aimed at trimming federal programs – even as the Trump administration has previous said it wants to expand vocational training.
Other service-related programs, like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps, have also been in the crosshairs of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
At least 21,000 students are now at risk of losing their places in Job Corps, 20% of whom would be homeless, according to program figures obtained by CNN.
'There is a cloud hanging over their future right now,' a senior source within Job Corps who asked to remain anonymous, for fear of retribution from the administration, told CNN.
Since its inception six decades ago, more than two million young Americans have used Job Corps to find housing, work, or to get an education. George Foreman, the late heavyweight champion, used it to earn his high school diploma; public officials from North Carolina to Washington serving in office today can be counted among its alumni.
In late May, the Trump administration said it would be 'pausing operations' for Job Corps centers, and that students would need to leave by June 30.
Afterwards, Job Corps centers across the country began winding down operations, numerous center directors told CNN.
Staff scrambled first to find shelters to take in students at risk of homelessness. Some students who were close to receiving their accreditation expedited their studies, in the hopes they'd be able to graduate before the program was shuttered.
But days later, a New York US district judge issued a temporary restraining order halting the closures and prohibiting the removal of students as further legal actions continue.
That set off a reverse scramble for Job Corps centers, working to undo what they did, return students to campus who had recently left, and to restart operations.
Amid this turmoil, Job Corps programs have lost over 8,000 students, the Job Corps source told CNN. The number includes students who expedited finishing their studies and those who decided to leave due to the uncertainty.
'The word I've heard a lot is 'trauma,'' the Job Corps source said. 'Many of these young people finally found a safe space to live while learning the skills they need to start a career, only for that to be abruptly taken away.'
Noah's life in the past last month, some 1,200 miles away from Washington DC, has mirrored the chaos.
He was forced to move out of the Guthrie Job Corps center to a nearby homeless shelter, where he slept in a small room with other 10 other men, which he described as uncomfortable and overstimulating.
Following the temporary restraining order three days later, he was able to return to the Guthrie Job Corps campus.
The experience has felt like whiplash, he said, especially with the fate of the program still hanging in the balance.
'It is overbearing. It is stressful,' he said.
When announcing the program's closure, the Department of Labor had pointed to low graduation rates, high costs and reports of serious incidents that appeared to threaten students' safety.
'Job Corps was created to help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education, training, and community,' Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said when announcing the pause in May. 'However, a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve.'
The administration points to an April Department of Labor transparency report on Job Corps that put the program's average graduation rate at just over 38%, at an average cost of about $80,000 per student each year.
Job Corps supporters say those numbers are inaccurately interpreted.
The report looks at Job Corps' performance for its 2023 program year (which runs from July 1 to June 30).
Critics contend that figures from this period are not a true reflection of the program's effectiveness as COVID-19 restrictions in place at the time limited enrollment, contributed to lower-than-typical graduation rates, and led to higher cost per student.
The report also said there were also over 14,000 'serious infractions' including sexual assaults, violence, drug use and hospital visits a year reported across the centers.
However, critics take big issue with this figure.
What the Department of Labor considered 'serious infractions' included things like false accusations against another student, plagiarism, leaving campus without first securing permission and cheating, which campuses are required to report, the Job Corps source told CNN.
About half of the 14,000 infractions involved behavior more directly related to harm, such as drug use, acts of violence, hospital visits or sexual assault.
Although the Job Corps source said that any instance of such serious incidents 'is one too many and, of course, it's our goal to strive to prevent any of that happening to our students or anyone,' within the context to overall number of students, the frequency of such incidents happening was less common than on traditional college campuses, the source contends.
These arguments have also been made by Democratic and Republican lawmakers in defense of Job Corps in the past.
The plan to shut Job Corps came as a 'big shock' to the Transportation Communications Union/IAM, said Arthur Maratea, the union's national president. The union says it has trained and helped place more than 16,000 Job Corps students into railroad industry jobs since 1971.
'I'm very proud of this program,' Maratea said, adding that for the students, 'this is their chance to go into a field that has a pension, to go into a field that has health care, to go into a field where they're making starting wages for over $30 an hour and room to move, where they can support themselves, their housing, pay taxes.'
Axing the program would not only affect the students, but also negatively ripple through the economy, Maratea said. 'We're short electricians, we're short on our carmen, we're short [on] everything.'
The potential shutdown of a skilled trades pipeline comes as labor force participation rates have steadily declined for youths.
'We know that those from less-advantaged backgrounds can benefit from additional mentorship, can benefit from stability that a job might provide and from understanding various parts of the labor market that they might not have been exposed to otherwise,' Rachel Sederberg, senior economist at Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm, told CNN. 'Anything that's increasing youth involvement within the labor force, increasing opportunities is something that we should be trying to do more of.'
On Tuesday, a US district judge in Manhattan ruled to extend the temporary restraining order until June 25, granting a temporary reprieve but still leaving Job Corps' future uncertain.
CNN has reached out to the Department of Labor for comment.
Noah says he is watching and weighing his options. 'I just, I gotta believe,' he said. 'I gotta hope for the best and I hope it falls in our favor.'
He is brainstorming a Plan B if his place at Guthrie's Job Corps center becomes untenable. He cannot return to the shelter he briefly stayed in, as it has a rule that prohibits people from returning within 90 days of their departure. He will likely try to live temporarily with a friend.
Back to sleeping on a couch, with no bed to call his own.
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