Job Corps | Free Education & Training for Low-Income Youth (2024)

Job Corps, U.S. government residential education and job-training program for low-income at-risk young people. Funded by Congress and administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, Job Corps seeks to teach young people the academic and vocational skills they need to secure meaningful and lasting employment. The program was created in 1964 as part of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society domestic reforms.

Modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) of the Great Depression era, Job Corps is a voluntary residential program for low-income U.S. residents aged 16–24 who are high school dropouts and/or in need of additional education and training to gain employment. Through year-round residential classroom- and work-based learning, Job Corps participants earn a high school diploma or General Educational Development (GED) credential and receive career training in one of many fields, such as business, health, construction, technology, mechanics, and culinary arts. Participants also get health and dental care, a biweekly basic living stipend, and career counseling and transitional support for a year following graduation. Participants may enroll for up to two years, but the average length of stay for graduates is eight months.

At the beginning of the 21st century, there were some 125 centres located throughout the United States. Although Job Corps is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, more than three-fourths of its centres are operated by private companies. The rest are operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and American Indian nations.

While the core components of the Job Corps model have remained constant, the program has expanded and evolved over time. The demographics of Job Corps participants have changed as well; Job Corps now serves a larger percentage of older students (aged 22–24) and female students. Job Corps also has had to refine its areas of focus over time to reflect a changing economy and workforce. Moreover, it has changed its curricula and teaching practices to address different student needs; interpersonal skills, for instance, have emerged as an important set of skills for Job Corps participants to learn. Job Corps has also implemented a range of accountability policies and procedures to hold students more accountable for their behaviour and centres more accountable for performance.

Among the criticisms of the Job Corps model is the implication that participants must be removed from their families and communities to succeed. It also has been argued that this removal may complicate the participants’ ability to reenter their communities, which are not likely to have changed in their absence. By far the most-common criticism of Job Corps is its high cost to the public, though various studies have come to conflicting conclusions regarding cost-benefits ratios and educational attainment of the program.