Workforce Development

We cannot solve the current unemployment crisis without first coming to grips with youth unemployment. While some have voiced skepticism towards focusing resources toward youth employment, such an approach is needed and reasonable for the following reasons:

• Nearly 1/3 of those currently unemployed are young adults, so tackling youth unemployment is central to dealing with broader joblessness
• Young people of color, those living in poverty and young adults with disabilities are facing staggering rates of unemployment—now at 49.4%. Without new opportunity, those who were born into disadvantaged circumstances may have few pathways to better lives
• Today's teens and twenty-something's could become a lost generation. Those who fail to successfully enter the workforce in their twenties have lower lifetime earnings overall, face a steeper learning curve when they finally do gain employment, and miss out on the valuable skills we all learn in our first jobs, like punctuality, responsibility for one’s work, as well as the entry level skills in required by any field.

Corps, like their predecessor, FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, are a timely solution for drawing young adults into the workforce.  When FDR inherited the Great Depression from Herbert Hoover, the brilliance of his solution was to take two crises-a decayed infrastructure and massive unemployment-and combine them to form a single success. Through programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Americans were given a chance to act in the face of disaster and make a contribution to the greater good-while lifting themselves up out of poverty. The same opportunity exists today.

Corps programs have proven success rates among those groups who are enduring the deepest unemployment in this Great Recession. A comprehensive national study by Abt Associates found that young black men in Corps experienced increased future employment and earnings, higher educational aspirations, and an increased sense of social responsibility. After their time in the Corps, 91 percent of young black men had transitioned into paying jobs, at incomes one and a half times higher than men of similar backgrounds who had not joined a Corps.

Corps are ready to do this work today, and have proved their ability to expand quickly through fast implementation of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding. In order to further expand youth employment, The Corps Network endorses any Jobs Bill that provides opportunities for Youth Corps to work on public lands, residential retrofits and transportation enhancement projects. Further, we encourage funding for AmeriCorps, Youth Summer Jobs, and year-round paid work experience.

The House Jobs Bill (HR 2847) included the “Jobs for Main Street Act,” a jobs bill designed to create jobs in critical infrastructure areas. Included in the bill is important funding for federal agencies that partner with Corps. In addition to the funding, The Corps Network is specifically mentioned in the legislation as an organization that the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior should partner with in carrying out use of funds provided by the bill: "SEC. 1402. In carrying out the work for which funds in this title are being made available, the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture shall utilize, to the maximum extent practicable, the Public Lands Corps, Youth Conservation Corps, Student Conservation Association, Job Corps, Corps Network members, and other related partnerships with Federal, State, local, tribal or non-profit groups that serve young adults, underserved and minority populations, veterans, and special needs individuals."

The Corps Network is working with the Senate in an effort to ensure similar language is included in that chamber’s Jobs Bill and that this language makes it into the final version of the bill.

Download the one pager “Youth Corps as Job Creators.”