By Alicia Wallace, CNN

(CNN) — Eighteen months ago, at around 7 p.m. practically every night, Chloe Lawson would start a four-mile walk to Subway, where she’d work the overnight shift, earning a buck above the $7.25 federal minimum wage.

Eight hours later, the then 19-year-old would clock out and head back to find somewhere to hopefully get some sleep.

She had no family, no friends she could stay with in Splendora, Texas, a small town outside Houston. She often found herself at “some shady hotel” or other unsafe places.

“I honestly didn’t have a future,” she said.

That’s changed in the year and a half since: Lawson, now 21, has interviews lined up to be a train conductor, a job that starts out with an $80,000 annual salary and could open the door for other higher-earning positions in the years to come.

But the vocational training program that got her and many others into better jobs is suddenly in jeopardy.

Lawson is one of at least 21,000 current students whose coursework and hands-on training were upended by the Department of Labor’s announcement in late May to pause operations at Job Corps, a residential career training program for low-income and at-risk youth that was started 60 years ago under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.

The Labor Department, citing budget deficits and claiming poor results, said that it was halting contracts on the 99 private-contractor-operated sites under its purview by the end of June and that it would initiate an orderly transition of students from the residential program into their respective communities. The move is part of a broader push within the Trump administration to slash federal programs.

“Job Corps was created to help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education, training, and community,” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement at the time. She noted that an analysis of the program raised concerns about safety and its fiscal health. “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 National Job Corps Association, a trade organization of center operators and other community and business organizations that support the centers, have pushed back on the Labor Department’s claims, arguing that the analysis cherry-picked data distorted by the pandemic and sensationalized the safety aspect (which the organization stated were the result of strict reporting requirements and included incidents such as injuries, power outages and adult students leaving campus without approval).

However, the abrupt suspension and potential long-term closure of Job Corps carries far-reaching implications, economists, employers, attorneys general and members of Congress caution: If Job Corps goes dark, the Labor Department is cutting off a long-forged pipeline of young, skilled trades workers not only when there’s a shortage but also when President Donald Trump is seeking to revitalize the US manufacturing industry.

“We have a very strong need for those with less than a bachelor’s degree,” Rachel Sederberg, senior economist at Lightcast, a labor market data and analytics firm, told CNN in an interview. Those include maintenance workers, truck drivers and healthcare roles such medical assistants, she said, adding: “These are very critical jobs for our economy and for our day-to-day as consumers.”

“We’re going to start feeling it quite acutely if we aren’t able to get things in our homes fixed or it takes longer to get things manufactured and transported and into our stores.”

A cloudy future

The abrupt May 29 announcement sent staff scrambling at Job Corps centers nationwide, and, in some cases, resulted in students heading back to the streets.

The operators of several centers filed a lawsuit in federal district court challenging the government’s move. Late last month, a judge in the case gave Job Corps a reprieve, granting a preliminary injunction on the suspension of operations.

However, that lifeline is likely temporary: A recent Supreme Court ruling that limited nationwide injunctions could affect the outcome of the Job Corps case and, in turn, the program’s operations. And, ultimately, Job Corps’ ongoing operations come down to whether Congress continues to fund it.

A Department of Labor spokesperson told CNN that the agency is not conducting interviews at this time but provided a statement following the injunction ruling: “The Department of Labor is working closely with the Department of Justice to evaluate and comply with the temporary restraining order. We remain confident that our actions are consistent with the law.”

The Department of Labor pointed CNN to an online FAQ about the Job Corps pause.

“The Department of Labor is collaborating with state and local workforce partners to assist current students in advancing their training and connecting them with education and employment opportunities,” the FAQ reads in part.

Trump, like presidents Obama and Biden, has long stated a desire to revive US manufacturing. Trump has sought to wield tariffs as a solution. However, economists and supply chain analysts have questioned the effectiveness of that approach.

The White House did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

In the meantime, industry members long involved with the program fear they’re losing opportunities to educate, train and place new workers to meet growing demand and help fill the void left by retiring tradespeople.

A report last year from McKinsey & Company estimated that from 2022 to 2032, the annual hiring for “critical skilled trades” roles (such as carpenters, electricians, plumbers, welders and laborers) is projected to be 20 times that of all other jobs.

A shutdown of Job Corps threatens to negatively ripple through the economy, said Arthur Maratea, national president of the Transportation Communications Union/IAM. The union has taught, trained, counseled and helped place more than 16,000 Job Corps Advanced Training students in railroad industry jobs since 1971.

“It will definitely hurt the labor market, that I can tell you,” Maratea told CNN, “because going into the trades, there are not that many apprenticeships. We’re short electricians, we’re short on our carmen, we’re short everything.”

Job Corps has provided a consistent stream of trained workers to railroad operators, helping them find employees while saving on costs, Maratea said. Without those added workers, supply chains could be disrupted.

“If we’re not there, the freights are not going to have enough people to do the job, which mean there’s hold-ups at the ports on goods coming in,” he said. “It’s going to affect commuters, and it’s going to affect our food chain lines. There’s a bigger picture to this.”

An avenue for at-risk youth

In June, the labor force participation rate for 16- to 24-year-olds fell for the third consecutive month and landed at 54.9%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

That rate is 13 percentage points below where it was in March 1990, when youth employment participation peaked at 67.9%. For comparison, the overall labor force participation fell 4.4 percentage points to 62.3% between March 1990 and June 2025, BLS data shows.

“We know that those from less-advantaged backgrounds can benefit from additional mentorship, can benefit from stability that a job might provide and from understanding various parts of the labor market that they might not have been exposed to otherwise,” said Lightcast’s Sederberg, who has researched the outcomes of employment programs for teens and young adults. “Anything that’s increasing youth involvement within the labor force, increasing opportunities, is something that we should be trying to do more of.”

In 2019, Jasmine Geib said she was on a fast track to a low-paying job and getting even further in debt with student loans.

“I was taking a break from college. I didn’t feel ready to go back there; I also was in a really bad place in my life, went through a bad breakup, and I just had nowhere else to go,” said Geib, 29, in an interview last week with CNN. “I was basically homeless, living couch to couch, and my friend went to Job Corps before me and told me about it.”

Geib had a dream of becoming a flight attendant and sought advanced education at Job Corps; however, opportunities shifted, and she ended up going through the union-run railroad training program in Excelsior Springs, Missouri.

Geib now is four years into a job at Union Pacific, where she is a licensed conductor and engineer and currently helping to move locomotives at the North Platte, Nebraska, hub as a hostler. She’s making $90,000 to $100,000 a year with the potential of having that double in a matter of years.

In recent weeks, both Geib and Lawson have jumped into advocacy roles, writing letters to congresspeople and sharing their experiences on social media about Job Corps.

“I feel like, if they need to do something, they can reform it; but I don’t think they should full-blown shut it down,” Geib said.

Lawson, who grew up in a small town outside of Houston, Texas, made good grades in high school, but college just wasn’t the right fit. She moved back home but was kicked out and ended up unhoused.

“I won’t say I had it the worst, definitely not compared to some kids here; I’ve never had trouble with the law,” she said. “But before Job Corps, I honestly had nothing. I had maybe 20 bucks to my name.”

Her former boss at Subway mentioned Job Corps as a possibility for career development, but the Texas center was full up, and Lawson scraped together what she had to make her way to the Job Corps in Collbran, Colorado, a tiny town nestled in the Plateau Valley.

There she learned about iron working, welding and fabrication and eventually had her interests piqued by opportunities within the railroad sector. With the TCU/IAM heading up a hands-on program in Excelsior Springs, she ventured east to where she is today.

“We need trades, we need CNAs (certified nursing assistants), we need corrections officers, we need carmen, we need conductors, we need welders, we need these things, and they’re helping kids who, in reality, would probably be in jail or dead,” Lawson said. “They’re helping kids that had no future make something of themselves instead of working at McDonald’s, instead of working at a low-paying job.”

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