Bernie Sanders Wants to Put a Million Young People to Work

Youth unemployment is at 17 percent while black youth unemployment between the crucial ages of 16 and 19 is even higher, at 27 percent.


By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet

June 5, 2015

Yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, introduced legislation aimed at tackling a crisis few are addressing: youth unemployment.

Alongside Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Sanders appeared at the H.O.P.E. Project in southeast Washington, D.C. – an innovative job training program that focuses on young men and women in impoverished communities – to introduce legislation that would employ a million Americans between the ages of 16 to 24.

The bill, the Employ Young Americans Now Act, would provide $5.5 billion in financing to hire a million young people in both summer jobs an year-round work while at the same time offer job training and skills to hundreds of thousands of people in the same age bracket.

$4 billion of the funds would be provided to states and local governments to directly hire people, while the remaining $1.5 billion would be given out as competitive grants to local areas that demonstrate they have the ability to do effective job training.

in full: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bernie-sanders-wants-put-million-young-people-work