Job Corps Centers In Mountain West Threatened By Deep Funding Cuts

The original story by Hanna Merzbach for Wyoming Public Radio.

Several Job Corps centers across the Mountain West — including one in Wyoming — could be forced to shut down next year if Congress moves ahead with major funding cuts.

Job Corps, a federal vocational program that trains young adults for careers in fields like construction, health care, and trades, narrowly avoided closures pushed by the Trump administration earlier this year after lawsuits blocked the move. Now it’s facing a new threat from Capitol Hill.

A spending bill in the US House of Representatives would slash Job Corps funding from $1.7 billion to about $880 million — nearly a 50% cut.

Under the proposal, only the top half of Job Corps centers, ranked by their 2023 graduation rates, would keep their funding. The rest could be shut down.

Advocates say that metric is unfair because graduation rates were heavily affected by COVID-19, which disrupted training programs, testing, and in-person learning.

If the bill passes as written, lower-ranking centers — including the Wind River Job Corps Center in Riverton, Wyoming — could be on the chopping block. Centers in Albuquerque (NM), Roswell (NM), Nampa (ID), and Phoenix (AZ) are also at risk, according to a Mountain West News Bureau analysis of federal data.

Even supporters of reforming Job Corps say gutting the program is the wrong move.

“Cutting the program’s funding in half would be detrimental to improving the program,” said Sam Gilboard, a lobbyist for the National Association of Home Builders, which works with what he describes as the largest Job Corps workforce training contractor.

Gilboard acknowledges some centers struggle with low graduation rates, which has made them an easy target for budget cutters. But, he said, eliminating capacity right now makes no sense.

“We’re not in any position right now, as a country, to be eliminating or drastically reducing the capacity of our workforce pipeline,” he said. “Our housing market can’t sustain it. The housing supply can’t sustain it. Consumers can’t sustain it.”

Job Corps is a major training pipeline for trades like construction — exactly the kind of jobs in high demand amid labor shortages and a housing crunch.

Over in the US Senate, lawmakers are taking a different approach. The Senate’s version of the appropriations bill keeps Job Corps funding flat at $1.7 billion, avoiding cuts.

The House and Senate now have until late January to hammer out a final compromise.

Gilboard said he’s cautiously optimistic Congress will land closer to the Senate’s higher number. Some House members, he said, have already signaled support for:

• Restoring funding levels;
• Backing an amendment to limit the Department of Labor’s ability to close Job Corps centers, after earlier attempts to shut them down.

“All of these things are leading us to believe that Congress really does not want to see Job Corps fade into the night,” he said.

There are 13 Job Corps centers in the Mountain West region. They fall under both the Department of Labor and the Department of Agriculture, which uses some of them as Civilian Conservation Centers that also support wildfire work, conservation projects, and public lands.

If the House’s deep cuts make it into the final bill, the impact could ripple far beyond training classrooms — affecting local economies, employers desperate for skilled workers, and young adults who rely on Job Corps as a path into stable careers.