Attorney General William Tong joined 20 attorney generals across the country in filing an amicus brief in defense of the Job Corps program.
Job Corps is a federal job training program that provides training, education and housing at no-cost to its participants. It has more than 120 locations in the country, including two in Connecticut.
On May 29, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), which oversees the Job Corps program, announced a “phased pause” in funding that is supposed to take effect on June 30. Just days before this announcement, the House of Representatives passed a budget that reduced the program’s funding from $1.56 billion to $0.
While this would technically not eliminate the program—that is something that only Congress can do through a vote—it would make it impossible for locations to function.
Ahead of the funding pause taking effect, young adults living in the New Haven Job Corps Center began moving out, Inside Investigator reported.
Now, a New York district court has temporarily halted the DOL’s funding freeze.
“For six decades, Job Corps has aided our nation’s most vulnerable youth through stable housing and job training,” Tong said in a press release. “The Trump Administration blatantly ignored federal law and Congressional authority in arbitrarily terminating this program—callously seeking to kick at-risk youth to the curb. Connecticut joins with states across the nation to protect Job Corps and the vital education, support and training it provides.”
In that same press release, Tong warned that thousands of people across the country who are currently enrolled in Job Corps could become homeless if the program is terminated. On June 6, the leaders of the Job Corps Centers in Hartford and New Haven spoke at a press conference. The Director of the New Haven Center, Juvenel Levros, said there were seven residents who were homeless.
The amicus brief, which was filed on June 13, states, “in the sixty years since Congress created Job Corps, millions of young Americans from low-income backgrounds have been served by the program’s unique combination of education, training, housing, healthcare and community.”
In 2023, there were 247 people enrolled at the Job Corps Center in Hartford and 202 in New Haven, according to a transparency report published by the DOL in April. That same year, 53 people graduated from the Job Corps Center in Hartford, and 73 graduated from the center in New Haven. On average, the DOL paid $155,600 for each enrollee who graduated from the program.
In the press release that announced the phased pause in funding, the DOL states the program has low graduation rates, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per enrollee, and that the average participant goes on to earn low wages after leaving the program. That, combined with high rates of serious incidents, casts doubt on its efficacy.
There will be a hearing over the proposed funding pause on June 17. The DOL and the National Job Corps Association will present their arguments to a New York District Judge.
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