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STIMULUS WATCH: Teens lack jobs despite job effort

The Obama administration’s economic stimulus module to find jobs for thousands of teenagers this summer couldn’t strike one of a bleakest pursuit markets in some-more than 60 years that had desperate adults competing for a same kind of work.

Almost one-quarter of the 297,169 youths in the $1.2 billion jobs program didn’t get jobs, as some-more adults flooded a labor marketplace seeking identical low-wage positions at hamburger stands and community pools, according to an Associated Press review of supervision data and reports from states.

Congressional auditors warned Wednesday that a government’s skeleton to measure the success of a federal module are so haphazard which they “may reveal little about what the program achieved.” A brand new report from the Government Accountability Office also said many supervision officials, employers as well as participants believe the module was successful.

“After a decade without a dedicated sovereign summer jobs program, a effort combined opportunities for young people which would have not existed otherwise,” Work Cabinet member Hilda Solis pronounced in a statement Wednesday. “We have succeeded in our efforts to increase job skills as good as career readiness for our nation’s youth through this targeted program.”

Though the module didn’t prevent girl unemployment rates from mountainous to 18.5 percent in July, a highest rate measured among 16- to 24-year-olds in which month given 1948.

“It was too little, too late as good as too poorly constructed to have any durability effect on our youngest workers.”

Cameron Hinojosa, 16, went through a two-day stimulus-funded workshop upon how to write a resume.

“You get some adults which got laid off from their jobs, so you still have to work against them.”

In Illinois, the GAO said, a little local officials didn’t follow eligibility rules. Paperwork was blank from some files in California. A little youths who got jobs through the program had difficulty collecting their paychecks, waiting in lines up to 4 hours in the rain, and sometimes police were called to assistance with throng control, a GAO said.

In Pennsylvania and Connecticut, bureaucratic holdups kept some young workers from entering training programs until July, slicing into summer pursuit opportunities, a AP’s examination found.

“Things are still all chaotic with this program,” said Rachel Gragg, federal policy executive for A Workforce Alliance, a Washington-based group which advocates for more national pursuit training funds. “In most communities they will tell you which they are still struggling to assimilate where a money is and where it is coming from.”

Despite the challenges, many states put together strong programs which gave needy teens experience in all from promissory note to restoring inlet trails, as good as year-round skills training and mentoring support, Gragg said.

“We don’t think everybody is perfect, though we think there is a lot of great news coming out of this program,” said Jane Oates, the department’s partner secretary for employment and training. “If there were mistakes made we’re happy to correct them, since we want to have sure that this program sticks around.”

To validate for the one-time program under a American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, job-seekers had to be fourteen to twenty-four years old as well as from families living at or below a poverty line, or meet other income criteria. States were speedy to use a federal money to create summer jobs, but also could make use of it in year-round programs for youth.

Work officials in alternative states pronounced such problems were common.

“It’s kind of hard to convince companies to hire teens for summer jobs when they’re laying off their adult workers,” Mary Sarris, who heads a North Shore Workforce Investment House in Salem, Mass. “This is a worst summer we’ve ever seen.”

The agency perceived nearly $15 million in impulse funds for youth jobs training this summer. Officials said the director’s salary had been adjusted, alternative accounting problems corrected and about 5,400 participants found jobs.

“There have been so most passthroughs before this module actually turns in to money which helps the population it’s intended to help which it’s almost criminal,” said Laura Chick, who was allocated inspector general by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to watch over California’s impulse funds. “If the local house isn’t watching what they’re doing, even less income is removing to where it’s ostensible to go, especially if it is being siphoned off to compensate for administrative expenses.”

Once a summer program ends this month, states won’t have to show that teens actually got jobs after school. A Department of Labor’s usually requirement is which graduates be more “workforce ready,” a term all states can measure for themselves.

Ashley Maydon, who was among a nearly 2,660 youth a Fresno County board placed with employers, said she was contemptible her $8-per-hour summer job would finish at the end of a month.

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