Late last month, the Labor Department sent a letter to dozens of Job Corps centers across the country. Its message was blunt.

“You are hereby notified that the subject contract is being terminated completely,” the department wrote. “You shall begin immediately all work necessary to provide a safe, orderly and prompt shutdown of center operations.”

The instructions threw into jeopardy the future of Job Corps, a Great Society-era job training program designed to help low-income young people enter the workforce. Many of the program’s students do not have a high school degree or are homeless. Most live, free of charge, in dorms on Job Corps campuses and learn trades in construction, automotive repair, health care and the like. Its defenders claim it offers a lifeline to disadvantaged youths — some 25,000 are served at the 99 centers told to shut down — and provides an on-ramp to employment.

But the Labor Department published a “transparency report” in April that showed something else: low graduation rates and swelling costs. Using those shortcomings as justification, it ordered a “pause in operations” at the 99 Job Corps centers that are operated by outside contractors.

“The program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve,” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement announcing the shutdown.

The abrupt decision reignited a long-standing debate over the program’s merits and effectiveness. It also created a new point of contention in President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut costs by dismantling elements of the social safety net. As Congress debates a budget bill that would reduce funding for federal anti-poverty programs such as Medicaid and food benefits, the White House is also proposing that the Job Corps, with its nearly $1.8 billion budget, be eliminated.

In addition, the department’s action stoked a power struggle between Congress and the president. Almost immediately, Job Corps became the subject of testy exchanges on Capitol Hill, during which members of Congress grilled Chavez-DeRemer on her decision. In a sharply worded letter, Democratic senators noted that funds had been appropriated for the program and reminded the secretary “of your obligation to faithfully implement the law.”

The National Job Corps Association, a trade group of Job Corps operators and other business, labor and community organizations, filed a lawsuit arguing that the Labor Department did not have the power to cancel Job Corps entirely and stating that “shuttering Job Corps will have disastrous, irreparable consequences, including displacing tens of thousands of vulnerable young people.” This past week, the judge in the case extended a temporary order preventing the administration from closing Job Corps until this coming Wednesday.

A Confusing and Chaotic Process

As the case works its way through the legal system, students like Jalen Carter are caught in limbo.

Carter, 22, said he entered the Pittsburgh Job Corps Center in January after a difficult period in his life. He had lost multiple jobs and had been hospitalized for depression and anxiety. His parents, no longer able to support him and his five siblings, were on the verge of kicking him out of the house, he said.

But at Job Corps, he excelled in his heating, ventilation and air-conditioning training program, he said, and was considering learning a second trade or entering a program at a community college while continuing to live on the Job Corps campus.

Now, he said, he doesn’t know what he will do, or where he will live if the program shuts down. “I worked so hard to get to this point — it felt like someone had just snatched the rug from underneath my feet,” he said.

In interviews, more than a dozen current and former students and others connected to Job Corps — which has centers in every state and serves both cities and rural areas — said the days since the Labor Department’s order had been confusing, chaotic and disheartening. The order required that the 99 centers operated by contractors close by June 30. (The U.S. Forest Service operates 24 other centers.) Some centers began sending students away, including to homeless shelters.

Olivia Symone Bender, 21, a student at the Clearfield Job Corps Center in Utah, said she had heard about the Labor Department’s attempt to end the program from her center director.

When the court allowed the program to remain open temporarily, Bender said, she felt relieved. But she also felt stuck.

“It’s the back and forth that makes it stressful,” she said. “I just want someone to make up their mind.”

Behind the scenes, some Job Corps proponents have been trying to persuade the president to reverse the shutdown. In a letter to Trump this past week, unions, chambers of commerce and local businesses pointed to the president’s stated goal of investing more in trade schools, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The New York Times.

“Job Corps is the nation’s only trade school that is turning homeless youth into welders and shipbuilders,” the letter said.

‘Productive Members’ of the Workforce

This is not the first time that Job Corps has faced scrutiny. In 2018, the Labor Department’s inspector general released a report titled “Job Corps Could Not Demonstrate Beneficial Job Training Outcomes.”

Among other findings, the report concluded that program participants earned substantially less than nonparticipants without a high school degree or its equivalent.

The Labor Department’s transparency report in April relayed a similarly grim picture. The graduation rate for the program year that began in summer 2023 was about 39%, far below the national average for public high school students. Each student costs taxpayers nearly $50,000, and participants on average earned $16,695 a year, just barely above the poverty threshold. Chavez-DeRemer also noted a “startling number of serious incident reports” on Job Corps campuses, including acts of violence, sexual assault and drug use.

(The National Job Corps Association has disputed the report’s findings, saying in part that the Labor Department selectively used data from a year in which the program was still recovering from the pandemic and its related policies.)

Still, support for the program has come from both sides of the aisle. In a letter to Chavez-DeRemer, nearly 200 House members, including some Republicans, wrote that Job Corps “ensures that young people become productive members of the American workforce.”

Several people involved with the program said they were hopeful that the judge hearing the case would allow the program to continue, although some said they were afraid that the Labor Department’s order had already done damage. Some students left their campuses in the days after the order, and it is unclear if they will return.

Evan Simpson, 24, had been studying to become a certified medical assistant at the Denison Job Corps Center in Iowa before the Labor Department’s order. He rushed to complete his remaining labs and tests but ultimately decided to return home before he received his certification.

Instead, he recently lined up a job as a camp counselor in the New York area and plans to pursue his medical assistant certification independently when the summer is over.

“I had to leave before I was just there to go down with the ship,” he said. “I’d rather just take my chances and study on my own.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Sydney Ember/Al Drago
c. 2025 The New York Times Company