Seeking a better model
An even tougher sell is getting employers to pay for it. In many programs, most or all of the wages for the students are subsidized by the workforce agency, said Martha Ross, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
In Pittsburgh, participants are paid by Partner4Work or the community group that sponsors them, while the employer gets help for free.
Partner4Work spends $4.5 million each summer on Learn & Earn, with 87 percent coming from the federal government, according to numbers provided by Ms. Saulle. Foundations kicked in $550,000, while corporate sponsorships totaled $50,000 — just 1 percent of the program’s budget.
For the cities that have gotten private dollars, there can be a trade-off.
Nashville’s workforce program boasts more than 10,000 career opportunities for young people this summer. Ellen Zinkiewicz, youth services director for the city, said the majority of those offerings come from the private sector promising to directly hire people ages 14 to 24 years old. (Roughly 1,000 job opportunities are working shortterm summer jobs or internships, she said.)
“The goal is not to create government jobs for 10,000 young people,” she said. “The goal is to create a city that has a culture of hiring young people.”
In exchange, Nashville cedes control over the hiring process.
It’s a tricky balance. Ms. Ross said while expanding access is important, summer youth programs risk putting too heavy an emphasis on number of participants over the right placement fit.
“It doesn’t answer the question: Have you made a difference in this young person’s life?” said Ms. Ross, who co-authored a widely cited study last year on how cities craft summer youth employment programs.
For some in Pittsburgh, the effect of a first job is evident.
One July morning at Partner4Work’s headquarters Downtown, a couple dozen older participants — ages 20 and 21 — gathered to talk about managing finances, an educational component offered by Learn & Earn. Many of them had returned after previous summers.
Chris Beckley, a 20-yearold journalism student at Clarion University, went