Indiana Job Corps centers to close as part of Department of Labor directive

INDIANAPOLIS — Following the release of a Department of Labor report on the nation’s largest education/job training program, the department decided to shut down all Job Corps centers nationwide by the end of June.

In Indiana, the program has helped thousands of low-income, disadvantaged and young Hoosiers (ages 16-24) receive job training and credentials of value for the last 60 years.

“To have that eventually leave will definitely be heartbreaking,” Reginald Porter, the Site Director for Indypendence, said.

Porter has worked for the Indianapolis Job Corps site for almost 20 years. Unless the federal government reverses course, Porter said the site will shut down next week.

“The specific training that they’re doing here—that’s not going to transfer over anywhere else, so they will have to go somewhere else and start over,” Porter said.

“Their hopes and dreams have been pulled out from underneath them,” Renee Wolf, the Campus Director for the state’s other Job Corps site in Edinburgh, said.

According to Wolf, the center had to tell the roughly 200 students it had been housing to leave on Monday.

“We’re still working with local resources to find homeless places that we can try and find these young people a place to sleep,” Wolf said.

A statement from Department of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer reads:

“Job Corps was created to help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education, training, and community. However, a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve. We remain committed to ensuring all participants are supported through this transition and connected with the resources they need to succeed as we evaluate the program’s possibilities.”

The report showed the Indiana Job Corps graduation rate in 2023 was roughly 30%. That same year, 434 infractions were reported between both Indiana sites.

But Porter said those numbers don’t tell the full story.

“Most of those infractions are from missing Chromebooks,” Porter said. “If we would see ‘24, program year ’24, ‘25, you would see those particular students graduating—those rates exceeding well [over] 80%.”

But the report did show trends for other metrics over the years.

According to the Department of Labor, almost 90% of Indiana Job Corps students received a credential of value in 2017. By 2023, that number had dropped to 30%.

But Porter said the report’s emphasis on pandemic-era trends detracts from the thousands of success stories between both sites.

“There’s the ‘aha’ moment that each student gets when they’re in the program and not having that and not being able to see that, it’s going to be hurtful, very hurtful,” Porter said.