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Business|Trump Says He Wants to Fund More Trade Schools. Just Not These.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/business/job-corps-trump-trade-schools.html
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The Job Corps program has long been the subject of debate, but it is now also a point of contention in the administration’s efforts to pull back the social safety net.
June 21, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
Late last month, the Labor Department sent a letter to dozens of Job Corps centers across the country. Its message was blunt.
“You are hereby notified that the subject contract is being terminated completely,” the department wrote. “You shall begin immediately all work necessary to provide a safe, orderly and prompt shutdown of center operations.”
The instructions threw into jeopardy the future of Job Corps, a Great Society-era job training program designed to help low-income young people enter the work force. Many of the program’s students do not have a high school degree or are homeless. Most live, free of charge, in dorms on Job Corps campuses and learn trades in construction, automotive repair, health care and the like. Its defenders claim it offers a lifeline to disadvantaged youths — some 25,000 are served at the 99 centers told to shut down — and provides an on-ramp to employment.
But the Labor Department published a “transparency report” in April that showed something else: low graduation rates and swelling costs. Using those shortcomings as justification, it ordered a “pause in operations” at the 99 Job Corps centers that are operated by outside contractors.
“The program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve,” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement announcing the shutdown.
The abrupt decision reignited a longstanding debate over the program’s merits and effectiveness. It also created a new point of contention in President Trump’s efforts to cut costs by dismantling elements of the social safety net. As Congress debates a budget bill that would reduce funding for federal anti-poverty programs such as Medicaid and food benefits, the White House is also proposing that the Job Corps, with its nearly $1.8 billion budget, be eliminated.
