SOUTH GATE, Calif. — In May, Jaylene Moreno became the first person in her family to wear a cap and gown and graduate high school.
“It felt really good to make them proud,” she said. “This is what they wanted, so I was able to give them that.”
Moreno immediately started looking for a job, but with no experience, she didn’t get any interviews.
“I felt like helpless or hopeless,” she said. “I felt like it was impossible to get a job.”
California’s unemployment rate has been steadily declining since the start of the pandemic, falling from 16% in 2020 to just above 4% now. But the unemployment rate among teens is more than 12%.
The Governor’s Office has announced a new initiative to get more young people working.
The Youth Jobs Corps will provide paid opportunities for youth to work in three priority areas: COVID-19 relief, food insecurity and climate change.
The state has given $185 million to cities to employ youth and empower them to serve their communities. Cities like South Gate received $750,000.
Eligible youth ages 16 to 30 will be connected to jobs at centers like Hub Cities, a job development center in Huntington Park for youth and adults.
Executive Director Joe Martinez said they serve up to 1,500 youth a year, the majority of whom live in southeast cities like Maywood and South Gate, where many young people want to help their families financially.
“In the southeast, it’s unique because a lot of the youth decide they need to stop and go to work instead of continuing their higher education,” Martinez said. “This is going to give us a unique opportunity for those youth to understand that they can help and support the household as well as continue their education.”
The job corps will support more young people like Moreno, who was able to find a job with the help of Hub Cities.
“This job helped me a lot with earning experience and helping me build my resume and giving me experience to write down and my skills and just develop skills,” she said.
She’s also applying for schools to become a medical assistant.
Anyone interested in applying for the Youth Jobs Corps can visit the California Volunteers website.
