Over the past several years youth have experienced a dramatic decline in employment. This includes during the summer months, when youth labor force activity tends to be higher than other times of the year. One potential policy option for addressing youth employment is providing support for summer job programs, which are generally administered by cities with funding from both the public and private sectors. Though information on these programs is limited, they appear to serve a very small number of youth who are in the labor force. The intent of summer employment is to provide income to youth and potentially meet broader goals, such as developing the professional and social skills youth need to succeed in the workplace. The current federal workforce law, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act (WIOA, P.L. 113-128 ), was enacted in 2014 and shifted summer employment from being an optional to a mandatory activity under the Youth Activities program. This program provides funding to localities across the United States for youth job training and employment activities. Other recent federal programs and initiatives have sought to expand employment opportunities for youth during the summer months. This report provides information about summer youth employment, including for those youth who are low-income and face challenges with securing employment. It starts by examining trends in employment among young people. It then describes how cities and other localities operate summer job programs, as well as recent federal programs and initiatives to fund these local efforts. The report concludes with considerations for Congress about the federal role in supporting summer employment. For purposes of this report, youth refers to individuals ages 14 through 24 except in reference to workforce data (which is collected on individuals ages 16 or older who are in the labor force). Individuals as young as 14 are included because the Youth Activities program begins serving youth at this age. Older youth, up to age 24, are included because they are often still in school and/or living with their parents. The Youth Activities program also serves youth up to this age. Federal data on employment are collected in a survey each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and include individuals ages 16 or older in the civilian, noninstitutionalized population. These data can be used to assess the extent to which youth are participating in labor market activity (i.e., employed or looking for work). The youth labor force participation rate (LFPR) is the share of the youth population (16 to 24 year old individuals) that is either employed or actively looking for work (i.e., unemployed). The youth e mplo yment-to- population (E/P) ratio is the proportion of the youth population that is employed. The youth unemployment rate is the share of youth in the labor force (i.e., the sum of employed and unemployed youth) who are unemployed. Together, these indicators help to gauge labor market conditions for young workers. Data for July are used in this report to represent labor force trends during the summer. In July 2016, approximately 38 million individuals in the civilian, noninstitutionalized U.S. population were ages 16 to 24. Of these youth, slightly more than half (approximately 20 million) were in the labor force. Figure 1 includes monthly labor force participation rates, E/P ratios, and unemployment rates for youth ages 16 to 24 from July 1996 through July 2016. The figure shows the following: Youth labor force activity increased during the summer months within each year, with the LFPR and E/P ratio peaking in July of most years. Youth labor force participation and the youth E/P ratio have declined since the late 1990s. For example, the LFPR was 73.3% in July 1996 and 53.2% in July 2016. The E/P ratio was 64.1% in July 1996 and 53.2% in July 2016. The youth LFPR and E/P ratio declined markedly following the recessions of 2001 and December 2007 to June 2009. The LFPR and E/P ratio did not fully recover following the 2007-to-2009 recession, but the E/P ratio showed some improvement. Neither indicator recovered to pre-2000 rates. Rates of unemployment were similar in July 1996 (12.6%) and July 2016 (11.5%). The intervening years show a slight upward trend, most notably following the recession of 2011 and during and following the recession of 2007 to 2009. The unemployment rate remained elevated following the most recent recession until approximately 2013. Figure A-1 and Figure A-2 in Appendix A break out monthly labor trend data for teenagers ages 16 to 19 and young adults ages 20 to 24, respectively, from July 1996 through July 2016. They show that teens experienced striking declines in their labor force participation (a decline of 33.3%, from 64.8% to 43.2%) and E/P ratio (a decline of 33.1%, from 54.0% to 36.1%) over this time period. Labor force indicators for young adults experienced downward, but less precipitous, trends. The labor force participation rate for young adults decreased from 80.6% to 73.1% (a decline of about 9%) and their E/P ratio declined from 72.8% to 66.4% (a decline of about 9%). Unemployment rates for the two groups were roughly the same in both July 1996 and July 2016: about 16% for teens and 9% for young adults. The research literature has not fully explored the labor force participation of low-income youth during the summer. One analysis found that the summer employment rate of teens ages 16 through 19 increases with household income. In the summer months of 2013 and 2014, about one out of every five teens with family incomes below $20,000 were employed. This is compared to about 28% of teens with household incomes of $20,000 to $39,000; and 32% to 41% of teens in households with higher incomes. Summer job programs are generally run at the city or county levels with public and private funding. These programs offer employment experiences and other activities for young people who are usually between the ages of 14 and 24. Activities can include exploring career options, project-based learning whereby youth learn about work through in-depth study, simulated work environments, training in employment skills, mentoring and assistance in finding unsubsidized positions, and internships. There is not a census of youth who are employed in summer jobs. A survey of 40 cities found that nearly 116,000 youth were placed in such jobs in 2015. Figure 2 shows common characteristics of youth summer employment programs. Generally, these programs are targeted to young people in high school and some older youth who have little job experience and may lack strong family or community connections. Given concerns about youth employment rates, mayors and other municipal leaders have recently taken steps to expand summer employment programs. There is scant information about how localities fund their summer employment programs. They likely use a combination of funding from public (federal, state, and local) and private (foundations and businesses) sources. Private sector support encompasses both funding to cities to expand summer youth initiatives and providing job placements for youth. For example, the Boston Private Industry Council, the city's workforce development board, secured more than 2,600 unsubsidized jobs from local employers in the summer of 2015. Businesses like JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citi have provided financial support to multiple cities for summer jobs and created work placement programs for low-income youth across their various business locations. Further, there is little information about the cost of operating these programs, though cities report that the largest share of the programs' budgets are for subsidized wages. The typical cost per participant is approximately $1,400 to $2,000. Summer employment programs are generally intended to serve young people and their families, and potentially meet broader objectives. The rationale for these programs may include the following: providing income to youth and their families; encouraging youth to develop "soft skills" and professional skills that can help them navigate their environments and work well with others; improving the academic outcomes and prospects for employment of youth in the future; deterring youth from activities that could lead to them getting in trouble or being harmed; and providing greater economic opportunities to youth in areas with few employment prospects. Federal workforce laws since 1964 have included summer job training and employment activities. These laws have targeted such activities to low-income and other vulnerable youth. Over time, summer employment has gone from a stand-alone program under the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA, P.L. 97-300 ), enacted from 1982 to 1998; to a required activity under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA, P.L. 105-220 ), enacted from 1998 to 2014; and then to an optional activity under WIOA, enacted in 2014 and effective as of July 1, 2015. WIOA authorizes the Youth Activities program, the major federal workforce program for youth. The program received FY2016 appropriations of $873 million. Funding under the program is allocated to states based on relative income and employment factors. States then allocate funds to localities, through what are known as local workforce development boards (governmental entities that administer local workforce development funds), based on similar factors. Localities are to provide education and employment activities to youth who have barriers to employment, and at least three-quarters of participants must be out of school. As noted, summer employment is an allowable, but not required, activity under the program. Data are not yet available on the number of youth who have participated in summer employment under WIOA. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA, P.L. 105-220 ) preceded WIOA, and directed local areas to offer summer employment activities to low-income youth via the Youth Activities program. Approximately 18,000 to 20,000 eligible youth annually participated in summer employment activities under the WIA Youth Activities program in recent years. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ( P.L.