Statement on the Summer Jobs Program for Disadvantaged Youth

I am pleased to announce that more than 265,000 disadvantaged youth already have jobs under the $500 million supplemental appropriation for the 1992 Summer Youth Employment and Training Program. More than 116,000 of these young people are employed in the 75 largest cities.

This is excellent news for our young people and our cities. It is a success story. We successfully urged the Congress to quickly appropriate the needed funds. Once the funds were appropriated, we moved quickly to get the money where it was needed to create the jobs.

The 265,000 jobs resulting from the supplemental appropriation bring the total number of jobs to date under the summer program to over 781,000 nationwide or 97 percent of the total expected.

Prior to the approval of the supplemental appropriation for the summer jobs program, over 516,000 disadvantaged youth would have had jobs, nearly 145,000 in the 75 largest cities and about 371,000 throughout the country.

Another 23,000 young people are expected to have summer jobs before the program ends. Of these, about 7,000 are likely to be in the 75 largest cities and 16,000 are expected in the rest of the Nation.

I commend the entire job training network, including the Department of Labor and the States and localities for putting the expanded summer program in place very quickly. On June 19, 1992, Governors and large city mayors were notified of their share of funds under the emergency aid bill. Official funding authorization was issued on June 24, 1992.

The summer jobs program is part of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), administered by the Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor. JTPA, which began operating in 1983, has served more than 10 million adults and youth who face economic, social, and other barriers to employment.