A Labor Department program designed to train 16- to 24-year-olds to join the workforce spends more per person annually than Ivy League colleges, but participants wind up making minimum wage on average — raising questions about whether it should continue to exist.
The Job Corps pays teenage runaways, high school dropouts, and twentysomething ex-cons to live in dormitories and receive their GEDs and vocational training. The national cost per graduate was $188,000, with the average graduate staying 13.5 months. Of more than 110 campuses, the 10 least efficient averaged a cost of $385,000 per graduate. Job Corps participants earn $16,695 per year on average after leaving the program, according to new government data.
Nearly $2 billion in federal taxpayer money is spent annually on residential Job Corps campuses, a boon for the for-profit contractors who run them. But the dismal statistics about the program’s efficacy have never been fully public until the Trump administration released a “Transparency Report” last week.
The Job Corps has only a 32% graduation rate, though statistics have typically been calculated using a misleading definition of “graduate,” which bumped the number up slightly to 39%. more
Whenever you hear the word investment from a Democrat or establishment Republican the only benefit taxpayers might see is a reduction from back pain caused by sitting on a fat wallet. Never, not one single time in the last three decades, has a single government funded program yielded a net benefit to the Americans who actually pay taxes. Not once. Never.
But the corrupt black democrats who run Job Corps are livin’ large, beeeeotches!!!
Productivity stems from families and culture. Yiu cant break up families with welfare and ghetto culture and then try and teach them work ethics and skills with lamebrain programs overseen by the same people who created the problem. In the old days, it wad the militarty that staightened out wayward kids.
The job Corp program up here in North Maine is nothing but a forced diversity program bringing inner-city blacks up to impregnate fat-assed white girls in the name of diversity.
Round about this area kids who are dopers, derelicts, criminals in the making, go to job corps and drop out to resume their previously scheduled activities. Useless.
Like everything else the givernment tries to do…..over cost, ill conceived and a total failure.
@ BUBBA Thursday, 8 May 2025, 16:09 at 4:09 pm
They deliberately understate the cost up front. All levels of government do that by design. Now, if my suggestion were to become law and anyone sponsoring a bill must have secured a fully secured performance bond before they even bring it to the floor that would stop yesterday.
If the cost is accurate the risk would be negligible for the bond, if t is abject bullshit the cost would be insurmountable and the damn charade would never be voted on or funded.
But the “big guys” get their cut too!
It would be far cheaper, and benefit the graduate just as much to teach them how to use a hamburger flipper.
Who’s being taught?
The students or the government crooks?
I was an admissions counselor for the Burdick Job Corps center in North Dakota for 10 years. I estimate that I put in over 800 students in that program during that time. I liked the job. I felt like I was giving students a fresh start/ second chance to their young lives. Unfortunately, I can remember only TWO sincere success stories out of the 800 kids I dealt with. Both of these kids went on to work as chefs on Norweign Cruise Lines. Their hiring was a direct result of completing their specialized training they received from Job Corps. 2 students….out of approx 800. The bottom line is, I realized that I didnt do jack squat to help kids at all. Depressing.