Thousands of homeless students left in the lurch after Job Center closures put on hold
Job Corps is a federally funded program for young people between the ages of 16 and 24 that provides free housing, meals, basic medical care, school supplies, childcare, English language instruction, and a small allowance while students earn high school equivalency degrees and trade certifications.
The National Job Corps Association sued the DOL shortly after the announcement alleging the department's
order
to pause the program was illegal because only Congress can eliminate the program and because it would displace thousands of students and lead to mass layoffs.
In June, a US District Court judge for the Southern District of New York granted a preliminary injunction against the DOL, effectively halting the DOL's order indefinitely and allowing Job Corps's 123 centers to remain operational. But Kary and the approximately 4,500 other students nationwide who were homeless before joining the program's living and learning spaces are still at risk of displacement.
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As part of its fiscal 2026 budget, the DOL has proposed eviscerating Job Corps, allocating it a fraction of its typical funding for the purpose of closing and demolishing the centers. Congress is expected to
begin voting
on the proposed budget
in September, though it can take months to pass.
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Labor experts in Massachusetts say the state's workforce development system is not designed for a shake-up that would displace many of the 799 students who were enrolled at three centers in Massachusetts in May.
'Whenever we need to put students somewhere, Job Corps is front and center,' Jeffrey Turgeon, director of MassHire Central, said. 'We're losing a major tool.'
After the meeting
announcing its closure,
the Shriver Job Corps Center told students it would remain operational for the time being. Yet, a majority of students who lived at the center left the Shriver Center, opting to find alternative housing in the face of
the center's day-to-day uncertainty.
After investing months into diplomas and career certificates, students feel mixed emotions about what will come next for them.
Kary worries about leaving empty-handed if the court eventually rules that the centers must close,
or Congress approves funding cuts to the Job Corps. She started her
training
program to work in public transportation, which she said typically takes one year to complete, just a week before the DOL order.
'As nice as it is, it still feels uncertain,' Kary said. 'It's a race against the preliminary injunction and the government.'
Mohammad Niazy, 18, and Matiullah Kabir, 19, discovered a near-empty cafeteria when they arrived at the Shriver Center for class earlier this month. The two commute to campus from Harvard, MA, where
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Niazy earned his high school diploma from the center in May. Kabir, who had already graduated from his local high school, studied computer technology at Shriver, where he started a football team and received his driver's license.
He said he was shocked when he learned that DOL ordered a pause in operations.
'It was so fast, people were not ready for this. A lot of people were living there and working. They were definitely crying, they were saying, 'Where do we go now?'' Kabir said.
Facing potential Job Corps closures, students can apply for state-run high school equivalency degrees and vocational training programs, paid apprenticeships, or community college, according to the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development
(EOLWD). Governor Maura Healey's housing office had also been developing a contingency plan for displaced students leading up to the preliminary injunction, spokesperson Tara Smith said in an email to the Globe last month.
'Until the lawsuit is resolved, we continue to monitor the situation with EOLWD and other state agencies as it relates to potential next steps with affected students,' Smith added.
Until joining Job Corps, Kary, who asked to be identified by her first name because she fears harassment by the government
as a transgender woman, was in and out of homelessness. She was kicked out of her childhood home by her family when she turned 18. She crashed on friends' couches and waited in line at food banks for meals. She eventually got a job as a cashier earning $9 an hour, but it was nowhere near enough to make ends meet.
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For four months in the winter of 2022, Kary slept every night in a tent — even in the pouring rain and freezing temperatures.
When a friend
told Kary about Job Corps's residential program, she applied as soon as she could.
'Job Corps was my only hope,' she said.
The DOL says it wants to end
the program because it is not achieving its
including the 38.6 percent graduation rate it cited in its justification for pausing the program, which comes from the 2023 program year, reflect high dropout rates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Local politicians in Massachusetts are concerned about the impact shuttering the program would have on their communities.
'The reality is a program like this, which no doubt costs millions of dollars just for the Devens center, is that it's not going to be replaced,' Massachusetts State Senator Jamie Eldridge, whose district includes Shriver, said.
In
'Massachusetts industries obviously depend on the kind of technical training the Job Corps provides,' Congresswoman Lori Trahan, whose district also covers Shriver, said.
Kary worries that she will not be hired for a job without her trade certification. She does not want to go to a shelter for fear of harassment but no other training programs offer housing.
Yet when she thinks about the future, she imagines a quiet life working as a train conductor, a career that she became passionate about while studying at Shriver.
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Kary has one more non-negotiable. She has to live in Massachusetts.
'I love Massachusetts. I'd fully crawl my way out of homelessness and then be in Massachusetts,' said Kary.
'This place is end goal for me.'
Jade Lozada can be reached at
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USA Today
12 minutes ago
- USA Today
Ebooks are on the line as Congress considers future of library funding
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Los Angeles Times
12 minutes ago
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The Hill
12 minutes ago
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Why is Trump struggling in the polls?
President Trump is struggling with his approval rating even as he has largely followed through on much of what he called for on the campaign trail. Through legislation in Congress and executive action, Trump has been able to mold the federal government to fit his vision, laying off thousands of federal workers with help from the Supreme Court, instituting widespread tariffs that have led to trade deals with various countries and getting his first major legislative achievement passed with the 'big, beautiful bill.' All of these were proposals Trump made on the campaign trail as he became the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years. But Trump has regularly been underwater in approval rating polls, raising questions about whether much of the country is pleased with his job performance and what he's delivered. Experts pointed to multiple reasons for Trump's struggles, including the complexities of governing compared to campaigning for votes. 'A lot of those things … he said he would get done on Day 1, and that's not happened,' said Jonathan Hanson, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. Hanson noted unfulfilled promises by Trump to lower prices and to end conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. He also said Trump is sometimes not winning when he is getting things done. 'On top of that, where he's had momentum and success in terms of implementing things, generally those policies haven't been very popular,' Hanson said. An underwater approval rating has been a rule for Trump, rather than an exception, throughout his political career. He's the only president to never have an average approval rating of at least 50 percent in Gallup's tracker, though that didn't stop him from being highly competitive in the 2020 race and winning the 2024 race with a sweep of the battleground states. Trump won't be on the ballot again as a candidate, but his poor ratings could hurt Republicans in next year's midterm elections. Trump's net approval rating fell to its lowest point yet last week in the Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) average, accompanied by polls showing vulnerabilities with specific groups like independents and on certain key issues like the economy and immigration, though he has somewhat rebounded over the weekend. He's generally oscillated in the mid-to-low 40s for months in opinion polls after starting out his second term slightly above water for the first month and a half of his term. While the changes from week to week have generally been no more than a couple points, he's consistently receiving less support in his approval rating than the percentage of voters who backed him in November, which was just under 50 percent. Scott Tranter, the director of data science for DDHQ, said a president's approval rating being poor has been the 'new normal' for administrations dating back at least to the start of Trump's first term. Former President Biden had a honeymoon period for the first few months of his presidency, but his approval rating dropped by August and never recovered, staying in the high-30s to low-40s range. 'There's a reason why populism is becoming big in the United States,' Tranter said. 'In America, it's just easy to hate the government.' He said people's motivations for why they don't approve of a certain president may vary greatly depending on their political beliefs, but it's resulting in no president being that widely liked in the modern era. 'It's kind of like someone saying, 'I don't like McDonald's,' and one person doesn't like McDonald's because they're vegan, and the other person doesn't like McDonald's because it's high in fat,' he said. 'It's due to completely different reasons, but they both hate McDonald's.' What is thermostatic opinion? Hanson said some of Trump's declining numbers can be explained by 'thermostatic opinion, a term in political science that describes opinions changing as a result of government action. 'People start to change their minds once they see the policy changes at the national level, and they react against it,' he said. 'If they were on the fence before, if they were a little bit uncertain, they now have new information, and they turn against what they're seeing,' he said. One of the issues where this effect has been arguably more pronounced recently has been immigration, which has consistently been one of Trump's strongest areas in public opinion. Several polls have found public approval of Trump's handling of immigration dropping. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research recorded a 6-point drop on the issue from March to a poll this month, while a Reuters/Ipsos poll placed his approval on it at 41 percent. Hanson pointed to the 'visceral' images of raids from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on television as turning some off who previously supported Trump's calls for deportations, which during the campaign focused mostly on those who have committed crimes while in the country. While Trump has railed against those in the country illegally who have been accused of committing violence, many who have been rounded up in ICE raids and facing deportation haven't been accused of committing violent crimes. 'His focus was we need to get these criminals off the streets, and that's where we're going to focus,' he said. 'But that's not really been the focus. So a little bit of difference from what people thought they were getting versus what they're actually getting, even though he is being aggressive on those issues.' Tariffs are a theme Some of Trump's proposals also haven't played out as straightforwardly as he presented them throughout 2024, such as tariffs. While campaigning, Trump argued that other countries were taking advantage of the U.S., and the tariffs would help ensure the country gets a better deal. But a regular back-and-forth between Trump announcing tariffs and delaying them has defined much of the past six months, which Hanson called 'chaotic.' Trump has notched victories with several trading partners in securing deals, including one with the European Union on Sunday, but the public's view of his handling of tariffs has consistently been a drag on his overall approval rating. Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll, noted that some of the fears of tariffs causing a wider economic downturn haven't happened — at least yet — potentially helping to keep up Trump's support among Republicans, with up to 90 percent regularly saying they approve of him. But Franklin added that the polls may show a segment of the population that supported Trump in November but whose votes were more about voting against the Democrats and an unpopular incumbent at the time. 'There is one other thing that is easy to ignore, and that is how negative voters were towards Joe Biden in 2024, and I think that needs a lot more credit for explaining the problems with independents voting for Trump,' he said. Trump has improved slightly among independents in recent days too in the DDHQ tracker, but he's been under 40 percent approval with them for almost two months. 'There's also this question about how negatively people viewed the Biden administration, and that didn't go away when Harris became the nominee,' Franklin said. 'It may have moderated, not much, and it's easy to forget that when we're focused now on everything that Trump does is some of the blame for 2024 among Democrats is they had a very unpopular president.'
