The center’s campus at 1480 Snelling Av. trained 264 students a year before the pandemic.
Now it houses and trains 161 teens and young adults in construction, electrical trades, industrial painting, certified nursing, culinary arts and office administration. Job Corps grads have gone on to work for, among others, Hilton Hotel restaurants, Delta Air Lines and the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades and Painting by Nakasone, Kapaun said.
Employees and state legislators called the move by the Department of Labor short-sighted.
Bobby Joe Champion, the DFLer from Minneapolis who chairs the Minnesota Senate Jobs and Economic Development Committee, slammed the budget-cutting move, noting that both Republicans and Democrats on his committee oppose the action.
The decision to cut the Job Corps program “is taking us in the exact wrong direction,” said Champion in an email Tuesday. “It is extremely disheartening to see the Trump administration negatively impact so many young lives in this way.”
The Labor Department said it is working with state and local workforce partners to connect students with other education and employment opportunities.
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