Pause On Youth Jobs Program Will Affect Charleston Center

The latest federal cuts will close a national job program for disadvantaged youth. The Department of Labor announced Thursday a phased pause in operations at contractor-operated Job Corps centers nationwide, including the Charleston Job Corps Center. 

The Harpers Ferry Job Corps Civilian Conservation Center, managed by the U.S. Forest Service, will not be affected by the pause.

For more than 50 years, Job Corps has helped eligible young people ages 16 through 24 to complete their high school education, train for a career and find a job.

Rosemary Barbee, the center director for the Charleston Job Corps Center, said the Job Corps program serves disadvantaged students that lack resources, including housing, that institutions like community college or trade schools cannot provide.

“We provide a place for them to live, and they’re given food. All that stuff is provided while they’re here because they live here, most of them,” Barbee said. “We have our Wellness Department to be able to assist with their medications, if they happen to have something like that, you know, medical needs and so on.”

She said thousands of applicants waiting to start the program will never get their chance, and many students already enrolled in the program will not have a chance to complete their education or training.

“Our main concern, absolutely, is the students, because we’re concerned about them not having the opportunity to obtain a trade, to obtain their high school diploma and go out and get gainful employment and be a contributing member of society,” Barbee said.

In its release announcing the program’s pause, the Department of Labor cited poor outcomes for students enrolled in the program, soaring costs and even unsafe conditions. 

“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 in the release. 

“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. 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.”

The Department of Labor cited an average cost per student per year of $80,284.65, as well as an average total cost per graduate of $155,600.74.

Barbee said the Job Corps offers far more support than educational alternatives to ensure the success of underprivileged students, all of which costs more.

“There are services that we offer that other places like community colleges don’t offer, and that’s going to make the cost of it go up,” she said. “Like I said, they live here, so we have to provide housing, food, medical and so on. So that’s going to make the cost be more than if they just went to a trade school where they do not live there.”

With regards to the severe incident reports, Barbee said the numbers are misleading due to the program’s requirement that any suspected incident be reported within 24 hours.

“Our investigation may not be complete, and after the investigation, it may end up being that the situation is completely different, that it’s not what it looked like because you investigated and found different evidence saying that it didn’t happen,” Barbee said.

The Department of Labor said they used the most recently available program data from 2023 to determine an average graduation rate of 38.6%. 

But Barbee argues that number is still skewed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We had to send all the students home, and they were home for about 11 months. Those numbers are going to be not as good as the other years, because they were at home, and they were probably in environments where it was difficult for them to work online,” she said. “Plus, everybody doesn’t learn that way. Some things you need to do hands on, especially with trades.”

Barbee also refutes the claim that students were no longer receiving positive outcomes from the program. The Department of Labor points to an average annual earnings of $16,695 for students after leaving the program. 

But Barbee argues the program is doing important work to break generational patterns of poverty by intervening in the lives of disadvantaged, sometimes even homeless youth, early. 

She points to success stories down the year including an executive at Management and Training Corporation, the contractor that manages the Charleston center, as well as the late boxer George Foreman.

“If they didn’t come here, where would they be? What would be happening?” she said. “Here they’re leaving better. I think it was very disingenuous saying that they’re worse off. I absolutely think that would be incorrect.”