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The Youth Employment Consortium is a private-public partnership committed to expanding summer and year-round employment opportunities for resident youth ages 14-18, which builds upon the successful models of our existing partners, Greening of Detroit and Youth Development Commission. Our goal is to develop a public-private partnership that expands sustainable high-quality youth employment opportunities in the city of Detroit that promote positive youth development (i.e. connect youth to employment exploration, encourage and support school persistence and secondary education attainment). Consortium members have spent six months as a learning community, reviewing local and national best practices around youth employment.

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The 2008 youth joblessness rate in Detroit has been estimated to be 82%. The current youth employment situation reflects both public policy and the economic downturn. The federal government’s shift in 2000 from funding summer programs to year-round employment for young workers resulted in decreased opportunities nationally from 600,000 in the early part of the decade to 100,000 in 2005. This policy change is exacerbated by the dismal economy and shift from high-wage manufacturing to low-wage service jobs. Young people must now compete with older, laid-off workers, and college graduates who cannot find work in their fields. In middle-class communities, kids may still find jobs through friends and relatives. But in low-income neighborhoods, there are so few jobs and the ones that do exist are quickly taken by adults.

The lack of employment opportunities is devastating to the 70,000 high school age youth in Detroit as it decreases opportunities to learn skills, develop work ethics and team work, and explore options for future careers. Without the possibility of a future, many Detroit young people, particularly boys, are dropping out of school and going down a hopeless path. While summer employment by itself, is not the panacea, it is a critical component to the opportunities our young people need and deserve to develop into happy, productive adults.

This Consortium provides an opportunity to communicate, coordinate and collaborate with private-sector employers to help them adopt one of the best practice models identified in the work of the learning community. It provides technical assistance in the implementation of youth-employment opportunities and will centralize the job-readiness training and the expectations needed to achieve the Consortium’s goal of quality youth development through every job placement. It will also distribute matching funds to nonprofit community-based organizations to support the hiring of youth in the nonprofit or the private neighborhood-based business communities.