Remarks of Joseph P. Walsh
Director
Department of Employment Services
Adrian M. Fenty
Mayor
On
Fiscal Year 2010 Summer Youth Employment Program
A Public Oversight Roundtable Before the
COMMITTEE ON HOUSING & WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
Honorable Councilmember Michael Brown
June 16, 2010
11:30 am
Room 120
John A. Wilson Building
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20004-3003
Fiscal Year 2010 Summer Youth Employment Program
Committee on Housing & Workforce Development
AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Good afternoon Chairperson Brown and members of the Committee on Housing & Workforce Development. I am Joseph Walsh, Director the Department of Employment Services. I am pleased to be here to discuss the preparations for the Summer Youth Employment Program, which begins in just a few days on June 28, 2010.
SYEP is one of the largest and most important things we do as a government. I am proud to say that this program is one of the ways the Fenty Administration clearly demonstrates the importance of investing in youth employment and work readiness. SYEP – and all our work with DC’s youth – is an investment in the future of Washington, D.C.
We know we are in the middle of tough economic times. It is more important now than ever before that we offer our youth the opportunity to work and gain valuable job-readiness skills so that they can succeed in life.
And it’s an investment that we know pays off - it is a program that benefits the community and the individual young people who participate.
One of the most important indicators of being employed when you are an adult is having work experience as a youth. At a time when the national recession has hit everyone hard, no one has been harder hit than youth seeking work: youth unemployment nationally is at its highest level since World War II.
In a time of high unemployment, especially for teens, these kinds of opportunities even more important than usual. The economy of the District and that of the nation needs this generation of workers to be engaged in work in order to be able to compete in the future.
That’s why of all the difficult and important work that is still to come this summer, the most important part of SYEP may be what happened this week: 21,285 District youth received a summer job assignment, 68.5% of whom live in wards 5, 7 and 8 – parts of the city hit hardest by the national recession and where teen unemployment is highest.
We know from a survey we just conducted that last year 83% of these youth would not have employment at all were it not for SYEP. That’s 17,500 youth who would be unemployed this summer without the Summer Youth Employment Program.
And this is not just an investment in the future – it also helps DC right now. We know from our own and national survey’s that the modest investment we make of about $ 1,100 per youth in wages goes directly into the DC economy. And it means summer youth workers can provide essential financial support for themselves and their families at a time when so many are struggling to make ends meet.
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