GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — More than 200 young people in Grand Rapids were left scrambling after the federal government announced it will pause the Job Corps program nationwide.
“I ain’t going to lie: It feels like (expletive). It feels like if you had hope and it just dropped all the way,” one program participant in Grand Rapids told News 8 Monday.
Nationwide, the Job Corps houses, educates and trains some 25,000 young people ages 16 to 24, with the goal of helping them find a path to a better life.
The U.S. Department of Labor announced last week it would pause the program by June 30, citing a “startling number of serious incident reports” and an “in-depth fiscal analysis reveal(ing) the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve.”
Labor Department suspends Job Corps centers operations, drawing bipartisan pushback
There are three Jobs Corps centers in Michigan serving a total of about 700 people. Of those, 212 are helped through the Gerald R. Ford Job Corps Center on Hall Street SE in Grand Rapids, according to U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten, D-Grand Rapids. Scholten, who has criticized the pause, also said 113 people rely on the Grand Rapids center for employment…