Milwaukee Leaders Slam Trump Administration’s Job Corps Cuts

(Left to right) Tom Barrett, County Executive David Crowley, Ald. Laresa Taylor, State Rep. Sequanna Taylor, Mayor Cavalier Johnson and Jons Corps Center Director Marlon Paige. Photo taken June 10, 2025 by Graham Kilmer outside of Milwaukee Jobs Corps Center.

Milwaukee’s top elected officials, past and present, are criticizing the Trump administration’s decision to axe a vocational school on the city’s northwest side.

The Milwaukee Jobs Corps Center, 6665 N. 60th St.,  is one of nearly 100 federally-run vocational schools across the country that provide education and career training to young people living in poverty, who are homeless or aging out of foster care. Most have struggled in the traditional educational system.

In May, after President Donald Trump‘s administration cut funding for them in a budget proposal, the U.S. Department of Labor began sending notices to center operators to begin closing the facilities. In a statement, the department called it a “pause” in operations, but students were told to leave, centers were told to close and no plans or funding were in place to re-open them. A federal judge in New York recently ordered a temporary pause to the Labor Department’s shutdown of the centers.

Mayor Cavalier Johnson held a press conference Tuesday morning outside of the Milwaukee campus, calling on the federal government to protect the Jobs Corps programs. Despite the recent judicial ruling, the program is not safe and the shutdown has already created “lots of consequences” for students and staff, Johnson said.

“For many vulnerable and challenged young people Jobs Corps means hope,” Johnson said. “Jobs Corps means opportunity.”

The mayor urged residents to reach out to their federal elected officials and share stories about the importance of the Jobs Corps program.

The mayor was joined by County Executive David Crowley, former mayor Tom Barrett, Alders Larresa Taylor and Sharlen P. Moore, State Rep. Sequanna Taylor, as well as Marlon Paige, director of the Milwaukee Jobs Corps Center and Chi Obasi, an alumnus and current staff member.

For Obasi, Jobs Corps was a lifeline. She first came to the school in 2011 for the certified nursing assistant program.

“I was 18. I was in an abusive relationship with, call it what it is, a predator. I had been in a relationship with this person for approximately two years and they were 10 years older than me and I needed to escape,” Obasi said. “I needed to get out and that’s what Jobs Corps was for me.”

Today, Obasi is a registered nurse and the Wellness Director at the Milwaukee Jobs Corps Center. She told media gathered Tuesday that there are many Jobs Corps success stories, and they begin with students, like her, looking for something they can’t find anywhere else.

“A lot of our students are coming here because they are looking for hope,” she said. “They’re looking for opportunity.”

Paige said students arrive at Jobs Corps struggling with literacy and numeracy and lacking the social skills that will make them employable.

“What we do is that we take these vulnerable people, we give them social skills training, we give them employability skills training,” Paige said. “We help them with whatever [Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse] issues they may have, we also assist them with their mental health issues as well.”

Ald. Taylor, a former Milwaukee Public Schools teacher, said she has referred students struggling with their education to Jobs Corps.

“We say they need something productive to do, something that keeps them off the street,” she said. “Well, this is it. Job Corps is exactly that kind of solution we claim to be looking at or looking for.”

For many children, Jobs Corps is both a new home and a new chance at life, said Rep. Taylor, whose legislative district includes the center. Since the news of the center closings, Taylor has heard from former students who said Jobs Corps gave them a second chance at life. The state representative said she doesn’t want others to lose their second chance and called on the federal government to continue the Jobs Corps program.

Right now there are more than 100 students enrolled in the Milwaukee Jobs Corps Center and roughly 100 staff.

“These are real people whose lives were immediately put in jeopardy by the sudden changes in how we fund Jobs Corps,” Crowley said.

The decision to shut down the program was made with “no plan, no regard for the consequences,” Crowley said. “Now let me be very clear, this does not make America skilled again.”

The county executive was referencing a section of the Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposal called “Make America Skilled Again” and which contained the funding cuts to the Jobs Corps program.

A number of local organizations and non-profits are trying to fill the void left by the abrupt closure of the center. Employ Milwaukee and JobsWork MKE are trying to connect students to other job training programs and employment pipelines. City on a Hill and UW-Milwaukee have both opened dorm space for the students. PathFinders, a non-profit focused on youth and young adult homelessness, is working with students. And the county’s Children Youth and Family Services agency is holding open 10 spots in a youth employment program for Jobs Corps students.

Before he was mayor, Barrett was a U.S. Representative and an important advocate for the creation of the Milwaukee Jobs Corps Center. When it finally opened in 2003 it fulfilled a dream of his to provide young people “a chance to succeed,” he said. He also said Republican elected officials in Wisconsin need to stand up for the Job Centers.

“Closing Jobs Corps Centers is the most cynical thing President Trump can do” he said. “It’s saying to young people between 16 and 24 ‘I don’t care about you’.”

When the Labor Department began shutting down the Jobs Corps Centers, it pointed to a now widely criticized report, showing low graduation rates and large numbers of behavior and criminal incidents including drugs and sexual assault at the centers across the country.

Paige, director of the Milwaukee center, said every school in the country deals with the same issues the centers deal with. Barrett said every program at every level of government has challenges.

“If there’s a challenge, you meet the challenge,” Barrett said. “You do not destroy the future of young people.”

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