him being present the committee will come to order we're kind of caught between two scituate both parties i think are in caucuses and we also anticipate a relatively early vote so i'd like to go ahead and members will be showing up but i'd like to go ahead the education labor committee meets this morning to examine strategies for ensuring better economic opportunities for young americans the summer part time job has traditionally been a gateway to future success for generations of americans in fact every member of the committee can probably look look back fondly on the first job at the corner grocery during high school or some other job to put gas money in your pocket every week in my case work in backbreaking summer jobs at the local refinery help me pay for college  debt free these job opportunities not only provide a needed cash to help pay for school but the save for the first car but they also give young workers and introduction to what it means to work with others for others on a shift and and try to make a living on these opportunities are scarcer for today's young workers than ever before when raising one reason may be that workers retiring later because of the shrinking pension benefits and four hundred one k account this means fewer newer opportunities for younger workers because older workers may stay on longer in order to rebuild their retirement security the dramatic fall in youth unemployment over the last decade a startling sixty percent of sixteen to twenty four year olds were employed in one thousand nine hundred ninety today fewer than forty percent have a job the lowest level since world war two this situation is grim especially when you take into account under employment during the first quarter of two thousand and nine workers younger than twenty five had an unemployment rate of thirty two percent that is nearly twenty percent higher than workers age thirty five to fifty four the financial crisis has had a severe impact on employment prospects for millions of americans not just indeed because of the horrible at a condom a younger workers are now competing with more experienced workers for positions traditionally the domain of the young and less experienced until the economy as a whole turns around younger workers will continue to be hit the hardest but the recession has only made a bad situation worse for young workers following the overall unemployment rate among younger workers sixteen to twenty four began more than a decade ago and has declined nearly every year even in periods of economic stability fewer young people do not make the transition to the workforce they face challenges of completing high school skills that they need to succeed for these young people alternative education and job training miles provide a critical link to the workplace today we'll hear about some of these programs and how they are trying to meet the needs of our nation's most vulnerable you are looking for summer jobs have been especially hard hit the unemployment rate among sixteen to one thousand year olds during the summer has increased by one hundred thirteen percent compared to ten years ago by looking at this data it is clear that that the drop in employment is not just a result of a sudden shock to the system but part of a larger a longer or larger trend you cannot ignore the fact that twenty percent fewer younger workers are participating in the labor market today than in one thousand nine hundred nine this tells me that more needs to be done perhaps we need to rethink strategies to help younger workers find meaningful employment in any economy the consequence of reduced work opportunities among young americans means fewer long term employment prospects less earnings and decreased productivity fewer work opportunities also result in higher debt more student loans credit card debts and so on if these dramatic trends are not reversed our nation face a potential generation of youth disconnected from the employment market that's why as part of the american recovery and reinvestment act we invested in additional one point two billion to beef up job programs including summer employment opportunities out of the workforce and sent him back the additional funding this summer jobs has proved successful in fact the government accountability office on th high wage high demand industries today's hearing also give us an opportunity to look at other programs that serve young workers and look at ways we can expand the program that are making a real difference we will also explore new strategies some develop by young people themselves to make sure the record and i would like to just briefly summarize a couple of points the chairman underscored the problem that we're facing now we've got over twenty five percent unemployment among young people the highest level since one nine hundred forty eight it's an great deal of fanfare associated with that but many of us predicted that raising that minimum wage would have an unusually on the young people people trying to get their jobs and it's difficult to make such a correlation because of the collaps economy but it seems clear to me that minimum wage did exacerbate the problem for young folks there are programs in place federal programs which i think we ought to be looking at the workforce investment act as and long reauthorized we ought to look at that it includes programs of the very young people for employment help them find jobs we ought to be looking at ways of making that more efficient i'm looking forward to your testimony today it is a problem that we need to it's that we need to explore and thank you for attending i thank you gentlemen pursuant to committee rule seven see all members may submit an opening statement or writing which will be made part of the permanent record i want to welcome our witnesses and our first witness will nearly a decade a senior policy adviser on workforce development to the late senator kennedy assistant secretary of her from boston college and a master in education in reading from arcadia university at this point i think mr  holt has something he wants to amend my statement with i would only second your statement that chairman miller thank you and i too and pleased to recognize and welcome jane it's a resident of lambert ville new jersey and current assistant secretary for employment in training many on this committee have known of skills and abilities as we  watched her and put her skills on display with senator kennedy's committee i've seen her skills and abilities on display firsthand during her as executive director of the new jersey commission on higher education and as a senior policy advis a strong proponent of new jersey's excellent system of higher education and work with gov corps and to make college more affordable she should be proud of her many accomplishments including helping shepherd try to the credit transfer legislation that lets community college students transfer to four year universities without paying for duplicate courses something that mirrors our committee's work here on the student aid and and fiscal responsibility act and i was particularly pleased with her efforts to reform our state high school curriculum sharpening its emphasis on math and science i think the committee and the whole country are lucky to have her in her words as she says as part of a team that helps america get back to work thank mr chairman now i really feel bad because i worked for years to try to get california state college system to do that and it's been years and years went over there and did it in new jersey  i feel better than i don't think students feel any better but the chairman she is effective as opposed to thank you thank you mr holt i appreciate that that's why we have the ability to revise and extend and just when i want to reintroduce the rest of the panel matthew siegel is the founder of the national co chair of the eighty million strong coalition of youth organizations committed to addressing the current youth unemployment cris clearly tells the american public that you get it nearly three million young people from sixteen to twenty four are not in school and do not have a high school diploma at least one point seven million out of work use are unemployed today and actively looking for work they're looking for work without the adequate academic or occupational skills they're looking for work with out of work history and without a support system to help them gain the industry recognized skills or the degrees that will help them compete according to a two thousand and nine study by the center for labor market studies at northeastern the nation's teen labor markets have been continuously declining over the last nine years as congressman klein said a new historical post world war two low level of employment for this age group and in two thousand and nine we add to their hurdle many of their parents and guardians their grandparents their aunts and uncles are unemployed underemployed or living or living in fear of losing their jobs through the recovery act funds president obama and this congress resurrected a standalone summer employment program  the recovery dollars provided subsidized work opportunities to over two hundred eighty thousand young people governors mayors and work force staff worked on a very short timeline to organize a program that had not been funded by the federal government over ten years and in my opinion they did a remarkable job at a time when private sector employers were dealing with downsizing and struggling to stay in business they opened their doors to young people to show them the value and dignity of work to give them a or sometimes the start to a resume that will be the foundation of their future the impact of this experience is those young men and women with whom i met and i'm sure you had the same experience it was a profound experience economists argue and i'm not going to get into that argument that for every dollar i'm sure my colleagues on the panel will for every dollar it has an accelerator of three dollars in the local economy i'll leave that for them to do or prove but what i can tell you is i brought three binders with me i have thirty binders of letters that were sent to the president this summer by young people without any push from any adult to thank him and thank you for this experience when i met with them and i read these letters i can tell you that there are all kinds of kids they were fourteen to twenty four they were white they were african american they were latino they were asian i met with and they told me some of them had stayed in school and some of them had dropped out some of them had been incarcerated and some of them were just without a clear path they had no direction for how to get from where they were that day to where they aspired to be but in their words what did they learn this summer they learned that work was hard but once you learned how to do it your job they learned that people are nice to you want to job they learn that the more you know the more you get paid and that's the skills on the job are related to the stuff they learned in school people at the workplace measured  people at the workplace wrote and edited each other's writing and when you forgot to put something on a list or in a memo and somebody else on the job couldn't do their job and everyone told them to take the hard course go there and work there as an adult and some of them learned they never wanted to do that job again and it was the only reason they would and what did they do with their money some of them gave it to their parents to help pay bills some of them told me many of them in fact told me that their parents were afraid of losing their houses or losing their apartment many of them bought clothes for themselves and some told me they bought those clothes for younger some of them told me that they spent the money on movies and mcdonald's and many of them told me they effort and result it put money into local economies and it's what these young people at least the ones that i met with and the ones that i got what the copy the letters from it gave them a huge life lesson we are taking as a serious look at the lessons we learned with this summer program if given the gift of a program in two thousand and ten i'm here to tell you we will present wider opportunities we will help local areas more efficiently recruit  country numerous members of congress spoke with our coalition and we work collaboratively to endorse policies that will create jobs and economic opportunity for the a million members of the millennial generation as one of our summit participants who recently hank you very much i'm honored to testify and i'm also delighted to be in the company of assistant secretary because we work very closely i am the founder and president of youth build u which is a national nonprofit organization which has supported the development of the two hundred twenty six local youth build programs in the united states and has worked toward the evolution of its becoming a federal program since it first authorization in one thousand nine hundred two eighty four thousand low income young adults produce eighteen thousand units of affordable housing in america's poorest urban and rural communities  is the only federal program that offers disconnected young adults and immediately productive full time role in the community while also providing equal measures of basic academic education toward a diploma  skills training toward a decent paying job leadership development toward civic engagement adult mentorship and counseling toward overcoming personal problems and participation in the support of many community with a positive set of values it attracts the most disadvantaged youth and produces a reliable shift in their values attitudes skills and personal identity the youth build network is also adapting rapidly to meet the needs of the changing labor market and economy teaching green construction while building energy efficient homes and positioning its graduates as a workforce prepared to weatherize and retrofit public and private housing programs are also innovating by multiplying career paths to include health care and technology build programs welcome the most disadvantaged ninety three percent enter without a diploma seventy three percent are young men seventy eight percent young people of color one hundred percent poor forty percent ha been court involved many are gang affiliated most have virtually no family support yet just about half of them radically change their lives brandeis university study of eight hundred youth build graduates up to seven years after graduation that seventy five percent of them were either in college which none of them expected to be when they joined you build or in jobs averaging ten dollars an hour sixty five percent said they expected to live longer an average of thirty two years  graduates often say without youth build i would probably be dead or in jail instead of college i have a job and taking care of my children on my own home i love you it changed my life i've been hearing thi to build programs how does it actually work the young people split their time evenly they alternate weeks a week in the construction site a week in the youth build alternative school the alternative school has small classrooms individualized attention nothing like what they experience prior to that they alternate week in the classroom in a week of school they are paid minimum wage for their time building homes and increasingly these a bill creates a small manageable community based community of thirty to two hundred students with a high staff to student ratio and if you ask the students why does it work they all say reliably it's the staff they care about me the teachers they care that i learned nobody ever cared about me like this before i came here looking for a job or a ged instead i found a family and a future as a result they develop a deep desire to give back and they become a positive force as youth build graduate and bennett once said i used to be a menace to my community and i'm a minister to it and ten years ago he was fifteen years ago he was in prison now he's executive director of a job training program in san towne baltimore the of building homes for people who need them being seen as a hero instead of a hoodlums changes their identity they love being the ones who are doing something good instead of something bad they're on the streets with tool belt instead of drugs for the first time the grandparents are proud of them other young people ask how can i do what you're doing how do i get it and as a result in every community two to ten times as many young people are lining up at the door as there is funds to let them in now there's a formula for success which i don't have time to outline is twelve components of this program that have to be in place for it to work every program is run by a nonprofit community based organization a local pub a public agency with deeply rooted leadership some of them are autonomy like a community development corporation some of them are local affiliates of urban league the core network the entire system operates as a dynamic public private partnership with national direction from usa and local linking the power of government with the creativity of social entrepreneurs our goal is to open doors of youth build to every young person knocking the obama administration and our champions in congress have pointed the way to expand from ten thousand young people a year to fifty thousand that would be a great thing  a recent study showed that every dollar spent on a court involved provided a return on investment of a minimum of ten dollars an eighty cents and up to forty three dollars and that the return on investment for getting a high school noted that it is even worse for hispanic american and african american youth high unemployment rates for young workers and long term negative effect research suggests that the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large negative and persistent thus when thinking about insuring opportunities for young americans we need to think about what can be done to help them recover from the negative effects of this recession even a just a decade or two into the future what can be done to increase the economic success of america's youth i have four fairly simple recommendations number one provide broad labor market education to high school students number two length job training to job number three increase the educational attainment of america's youth particularly hispanic and black youth number four provide adequate financial aid for older college students number one provide broad labor market education to high school students more than a decade ago ray marshall the former secretary of the later labor in the carter administration stated that we have no systematic process he used to assist high school graduates to move smoothly from school into employment unfortunately this statement is still largely true today about sixty percent of today's youth the majority of young americans will not obtain a college degree who educates about their job options and the world of work students tend to learn about jobs from friends and family this means there is tremendous variation in the quantity and quality of information that students receive typically students from more advantaged backgrounds receive better information in order to begin to level the playing field education about the labor market should be part of the formal high school curriculum number to link job training to jobs the common criticism of job training programs is that they often provide training for  the registered apprenticeship program provides on the job training and is the ideal job training program registered a program should be expanded into nontraditional areas outside of manufacturing and construction other jobs programs jobs training programs should also be designed for jobs that actually the number three increase the educational attainment of america's youth particularly hispanic and youth current research suggests that the choice of a college can decrease or increase the likelihood that a particular student obtains a college diploma the study of chicago public school graduates found that the average students likelihood of graduating vary dramatically depending on the college attended the six most popular in state colleges graduated chicago public school students at a rate of twenty six percent less popular in state colleges however had a chicago public school graduation rate of forty six percent twenty percentage points higher high school students should be educated about the importance of considering the college graduation rate in choosing a college it is a small step that has the potential to have a big effect on college graduation rate number four provide adequate financial aid for older college students the recession will have negative economic effect on young workers the economic success of young workers will be affected by the amount of opportunities they have to acquire additional educate education and training over their lifetime in two thousand and seven twenty percent of students pursuing an undergraduate degree were over twenty nine years old and over time we're seeing fewer and fewer college students who fit the traditional stereotype we have to reporting deadline but anecdotally i would tell you that i agree that a lot of the jobs were in public sector people worked in community colleges people worked in municipal government did internships but there were a significant number of interesting jobs that  summer in emerging emerging industries lots of lots of new career lines were built in terms of health care lots of young kids got exposed to jobs in health care that they didn't know some local areas surveys you know what are the jobs in health care and responded nurses and doctors but after their summer experience they were they were given access to knowledge about all the careers that are the tech jobs in hospitals as well as the back office jobs in hospitals and things like accounting and service that they had never you know aligned with working in a hospital but i will not be surprised if we still see a lot of them on just what mr wilson said lots of people going into nonprofits and going into a local things like i said community college only because i think there was not the time to build those relationships in a better way with the private sector because of the timeline as you brought up and also because some of those jobs  programs and to include in that cost benefit analysis we need to do more in terms of getting people to understand the cost benefit of going to school or going to a training program in terms of their lifelong learning and congresswoman if i may you know i would just like to comment on the summer youth program i believe that the recovery act was an economic stimulus program and i don't think there's any doubt the five thousand kids who were in your in your area contributed to your local economy so while i agree with mr wilson that there it's difficult to measure the long term gains and we will commit to doing that but boy a short term game was they spent their money and they were able to engage in things like buying books like buying gas for their car to get school that they would have been able to do without that and that's without even doing the nightmare of what would have happened if they had nothing to do all summer and i say that not just for your district but for kids but for the two hundred eighty thousand kids all over the country what would they have done with all that free time instead of forty hours a week preparing and attending more opportunities thank you but let me also say that it gives you a sense of pride to get up every day and know that you have somewhere to go productive that you are accomplishing something that you are putting money in your pocket there is a sense of well being about work no matter how much you make so i know i may be looking at this very differently i know that there were issues with the program i know that there are things we could have done better but i think that it was a tremendous start to get these young people to understand how important to work to put yourself in a position to work discipline yourself to go to school every day to get up and know how to dress and how to speak i think th your programs are more than promising you know we use the term promising practices all the time and have no meaning anymore but these are incredibly important on several levels one they give kids training in jobs that we know exist and  well educated trained young people in our communities and i think the tertiary point would be that in communities of long term poverty long term hopelessness we need to make sure that we're not only the individuals people in the workforce because their workers who are not forced to leave because of illness or some other are or some other issue are staying in the workforce longer and their concern is are they still going to be welcome when they're sixty four you know i mean is that still but building the workforce there and while it doesn't respond to your question exactly of what do we do when people retire and there's need tens of a retraining and training workers of all ages now i would agree with you that there are nationally some sectors were graying very quickly and i would point to the tale of the sector number one i don't know how long people can stay at some of the utility jobs as they age so the utility folks have been working with me since i was confirmed to really address this problem and to look at some possible solutions for instance you know a national credential for certain pieces in the utility industries for certain jobs in that industry so that people had the mobility if they had to to move to get a utility job in an area where they knew they had the credentials and the second thing that i want to applaud them for you know i had very little to do with this except now i'm promoting it they have a line utility job codes in the civilian sector with military jobs meaning that as our young people and not so young people come back from military service they can transition into those open utility jobs so i think that's a model that we could use in other growing sectors  haven't even tried to do that yet in health care but obviously many people who who are serving are doing things that are directly related to the health care field so my hope is in the months to come we could work with that industry to do the same thing and still the good ideas from the utility summer program since one thousand nine hundred ninety so the two area the two sectors in which we tried to help local areas were the two sectors that are growing nationwide education and health care the rest of it was really built on local labor market information and i would tell you quite honestly congressman i think the department of labor has a work to do there we need to improve our labor market information we need to improve the ability of local areas to use that information we need to work with states as they better  code sometimes you know the state job codes are so broad that a young person can't figure out what job they need so we have work to do there i hope and a year i can tell you that we've made significant progress there but this is really about a working in partnership by the national level with the part of education to send a clear example of what jobs give kids better career exploration using technology instead of using time because time is scarce and a young person when they're in high school or when they're doing job search and finally making sure that there's a clear pathway through more clearly defining the credentials you need to qualify for those jobs and where you can get those who are your local area  assistant secretary of my area of los angeles county received about nine million dollars in stimulus funds for the summer youth employment program and about fifty five hundred participated nearly ha indicate that these were successes yet as you mentioned summer youth programs hadn't been offered by the department of labor for nearly a decade since year two thousand is the department  considering is it considering making making a long term commitment to summer employment programs and what criteria would you be using to consider this success i know that you are looking at the successes and failures of this past program but it appears to me that summer youth programs are very important we think they're very important as you're aware congresswoman the current legislation the workforce investment act does not allow for a standalone summer use program instead dictates year round youth programs which summer youth could be a part but it's been a very small part and we it was was authorized in one thousand nine hundred eighty we would be wore them willing to work with you about revitalizing a standalone summer youth program and with the appropriations committee on that we think that this summer given a three month timeline to kind of get it up and running what we think it was incredibly successful we think it could be better if there were a long term commitment to it and employers knew that this was not a one shot deal and that they had the opportunity not only to build their infrastructure at their business to support temporary summer employees but also had the ability to move those older youths who were looking for full time employment into that that does take a concentrated effort by employers it was one that many were not ready for this year but anecdotally we know that a number of older use did move into permanent employment this year and will be looking at ways david to verify that as we move on this fall so we we really do look forward to it and we and los angeles by the way did a wonderful job we had lots of stories from there and the community college system there was a huge partner in making sure that those jobs were meaningful thank you for that another program that that seems to be very successful is connected and it's  program that is in my local area in the montebello in pasadena school districts and it prepares high school students for both college and career using multiple pathways to help students gain an advantage in a high school college an connecting academics with real world experience so that they can do internships in those areas and get exposed to it and those that are able to link their student interests with with the job preparation can experience well actually they do have excellent results with higher graduation rates increase college enrollment and higher earning potential so it seems to be the kind of thing that we should be doing i'm wondering what the department of labor  doing to coordinate with the the u s department of education on programs like this congresswoman programs like connected are clear examples of areas where we think perkins vocational education the high school dollars and the we use dollars should be working together and while the assistant secretary for the office of vocational adult education has not yet been confirmed we have been working already with undersecretary martha cantor to discuss ways that we could better align we're making significant for instance we both have sectoral advisory groups oftentimes in the same career clusters we're under discussion right now about combining those so that employers who come in to offer advice t department of education and the department of labor don't have to do it twice and don't have to say different things to different apartments we think that since one thousand nine hundred eight when the workforce investment act was created we kind of said to the local areas you have to work together but at the federal level we never did we think we have to work together on eligibility we think we have to work together on better aligned program content and we think we definitely have to work together on better aligned reporting local area double time to report one way for perkins secondary and another way for post secondary or adult literacy so i think it's too early to be overly optimistic so let me say i'm cautiously optimistic that our procedure but i think this committee and the senate committee should also be watching very carefully if we don't do something if we don't have clear and marketable results all these efforts meant nothing thank you thank you for that and to finally let me ask about this so it's good for the for the economy overall the other thing to keep in mind is that in one thousand nine hundred eighty the federal minimum wage in two thousand and nine dollars was a dollar and forty six cents above what it is  unemployment rate was also quite low there is another some other research done by the fiscal policy institute found that states with minimum wages above the federal  gives us another example of how we have to work with the department of education because we can't even talk to young people about aspiring to any career in health care if they haven't had a strong laboratory science background in high school you know they can take science out of a book they have to be able to know how to use instrumentation and how to react with that so we're that's a clear example we're happy to train them we're happy to help but we're we're we can't do it alone so we're doing it in partnership with the department of education so not only the next generation will be ready but also some of our folks can use some of those facilities train because as you know the community colleges even in your home state of tennessee are packed and if we can get some of these training programs going on in the wonderful high school laboratories in the evenings and things like that we're able to both i think that in any local area there are jobs available so what you described as a mismatch exists almost everywhere and that the point of that is we need to get better labor market information to young people so that they can qualify for those jobs but clearly in this recession there are too few jobs and our training under our formula programs as well as our competitive programs has been urging people to go for a longer term training so that people get the qualification the credential the degree so that when this economy rebreather rebounds and instead of looking and tracking job losses every month we are back to job gains those people will be ready and able to take those jobs there is clearly a need to align the job training with the modeling that we're seeing about openings whether in health care or education or the utility industry or other emerging green industries so there is a little bit of a gamble there but we're hoping that the