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Mail
Magazine 24
Hopeless:
Job Corps Slams Door on
30,000 Young Adults
by Tony Lee
President
Barack Obama campaigned
last week to promote his plans for job training and job creation that
he
claimed would expand the country's middle class, fully aware that the
Job Corps
program had suspended enrollment in January due to gross bureaucratic
mismanagement of the country's largest job-training program for
low-income
youths, particularly African Americans.
The
freeze started in January and
is expected to last until June 30. That did not stop Obama from making
lofty
promises in his State of the Union address last week about job creation.
The
enrollment freeze could prevent
as many as "30,000 young adults struggling in a troubled economy" from
getting jobs and cost another 10,000 staff jobs.
Job
Corps has been described as a
"vanguard" of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s so-called war on poverty.
Since opening its first center in 1965, the free program gave "young
adults a chance to earn a high school diploma, receive vocational
training or
earn certifications in more than 100 specializations."
That
was until 2011, when Job Corps
faced a $30 million shortfall and had to temporarily implement a freeze
for the
first time in the program's history. Job Corps reportedly has a $61.5
million
budget shortfall now, which led to an even more prolonged freeze.
Sen.
Bob Casey (D-PA) speculated
whether the enrollment freeze was due to a "management failure" and
has requested an audit of the budget. He intends to hold hearings
within weeks
in the Senate on the matter.
Rep.
Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said
the "timing of the freeze could not be worse," because "though
our economy is adding jobs, the number of unemployed remains high."
The
unemployment rate for young
adults ages 16 to 24 was 17.4% in January; for African American young
adults, a
demographic that makes up nearly half of Job Corps students, the
unemployment
rate is a staggering 28%.
Labor
Department spokesperson Carl
A. Fillichio said the "decision to suspend the enrollment was not made
lightly," and Job Corps would be conducting "an exhaustive review of
its current operating costs."
The
freeze has devastated young
adults in Obama's backyard, who are now left without the hope Obama's
campaigns
in 2008 and 2012 promised them.
Teryn
McRae, a 20-year-old
Washington, D.C. resident who had been approved for Job Corps and was
set to
start his training on Feb. 5. told the Washington Post the enrollment
freeze
"crushed" him because "all my avenues are closed."
"I
felt like all my windows
and doors of opportunity closed," he said.
A
Job Corps Center in Southwest
Washington, D.C. was slated to have 317 new students. Those students
will not
be enrolled, and the center may shed 107 jobs.
Source:
Breitbart
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