Editorial: Ending Job Corps a short-sighted move by White House

By The Herald Editorial Board

For a president who has saddled American families and the U.S. economy with tariffs and threats of higher tariffs in pursuit of bringing back American manufacturing, the Trump administration seems less concerned about who will work in U.S. industries and trades, even as the nation already faces a shortfall of qualified workers.

Late last month, President Trump’s Department of Labor announced its plans to wind down the operations of Job Corps, the more than 60-year-old program that provides residential education and job training for low-income people between 16 and 24 years of age. Currently, the program serves about 25,000 people nationwide — some 4,500 who were previously homeless — at 120 Job Corps centers across the nation. The program is meant to aid those who have struggled to earn high school diplomas and obtain further training and jobs, while providing housing and health care.

Four Job Corps centers are located in Washington state, including the Cascades Job Corps program with about 250 participants in Sedro-Woolley, west of Mount Vernon, with an administrative office and career training services based at Everett Station. Along with classes offering general education degrees, the Sedro-Woolley center offers training in office administration, medical office assistance, security, culinary arts and computer technology. In its 40 years, the Cascades Job Corps Center has helped more than 10,000 low-income young adults complete trade certificates and college credits.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer announced a “pause of operations,” last month with the intention of winding down the program by June 30, ending training programs and displacing participants. The Trump administration in its recently released budget proposal is seeking to end the program permanently, with the attempted closure hoping to get a jump on Congress’ decision.

In seeking the shutdown, the department has cited “significant financial challenges,” alleging a $140 million deficit in 2024 and a projected deficit for this year of $213 million. As well, it cited what it considers a low program graduation rate of less than 39 percent and what it called “more than 14,000 serious incidents” at Job Corps centers, including incidents of sexual assault, violence and drug use.

A nonprofit trade group that includes representatives of business, labor, volunteer and community organizations, the National Job Corps Association, however, has refuted the claims of the department’s “transparency report”— completed by a staffer for the Department of Government Efficiency — noting that the program’s funding has remained largely unchanged at $1.75 billion a year for several years, with 90 percent of funding supporting operations, and less than 2 percent for administration. While per-student costs had increased and graduation rates had fallen during the covid pandemic, the association said those numbers have been steadily improving since 2022. The association also questioned the department’s allegation of “serious incidents,” noting that centers are required to report incidents as minor as class tardiness, athletic injuries and use of profanity among those 14,000 incidents.

“Job Corps students experience assaults and sexual violence at far lower rates than their peers in their home communities and on college campuses,” the association’s report stated.

The association last week filed a lawsuit, challenging the department’s action, and sought a restraining order, which a New York District Court judge granted Wednesday, preventing the Labor Department from eliminating jobs and removing students from the residential programs. The lawsuit, along with calling attention to the loss of training, jobs and homes for students, alleges the Trump administration does not have authority to end the program, for which Congress already had allocated funding.

And it could be a mistake to assume Congress will rubber-stamp President Trump’s plans to end the program altogether in the next budget. The program has had and continues to have strong bipartisan support, as noted by U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-2nd District, even from the Labor secretary herself when she was a member of Congress last year for Oregon’s 5th District.

“One year ago, my former House of Representatives colleague Lori Chavez-DeRemer signed onto a letter supporting funding for the Job Corps program. Today, as the Secretary of Labor, she has closed the program,” Larsen noted in a statement.

The same letter was signed by 113 members of Congress, from both parties.

Larsen criticized the attempt to end the program, citing the loss of opportunities for disadvantaged youths and young adults and the loss of jobs for instructors and others as “a part of the Trump administration’s efforts to give a tax break to the richest Americans and wealthiest corporations.”

Also expressing opposition to the Labor Department’s move was Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee, who said her state’s two Job Corps centers “have become important pillars of support for some of our most disadvantaged young adults.”

Collins was joined by her committee’s ranking member, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who in a blunt post on X said: “For 60+ years, the Job Corps has helped millions of young people get workforce training & land good jobs, especially in the trades. Trump is shutting down programs NOW, ignoring the funding Congress provided. So much for having workers’ backs. These cuts must be reversed.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in its most recent workforce report finds that there are more open jobs than available workers, a situation experienced by companies of every size and industry, with workers of every level of education and training needed.

The need is even sharper in Washington state, where the Washington Roundtable has forecast 1.5 million job openings in the next decade, 75 percent of which will require post-secondary credentials, including 45 percent of positions that will require at least a bachelor’s degree. But the first step to post-secondary credentials and the jobs that follow, of course, is that equivalent of a high school diploma, which opens up training in trades, apprenticeships and further education and careers.

Scuttling the Jobs Corps program trades short-term budget cuts for an even greater gap in the jobs that America must fill and those available to work them, and dooms too many to low-paying jobs and long-term unemployment.