Lea Moyer began taking classes at the Blue Ridge Job Corps center in Marion in October after experiencing homelessness.
Moyer, 22, entered the foster care system when she was 17 years old. She struggled with her mental health, and that led her to getting “kicked out” of foster care programs, she said.
“When I aged out no one was there to help me with anything anymore, and due to my mental health and needing hospitalizations sometimes it was hard to keep up with housing and a job,” she said.
Now, she’s studying to become a certified nursing assistant while living on the Job Corps campus in Smyth County. The program is self-paced, and she is working through chapter eight of a 50-chapter program to receive her certification. At its height, the Blue Ridge center had 92 students at one time.
“It felt like a second chance,” Moyer said. “With college not really working out for me and not having a lot of stability in my life, this brought back that stability and it helped my mental health a lot.”
Now, after more than half a century in action, 99 centers contracted by the federal government across the country — including two in Virginia: one in Amherst and the one in Marion — are at risk of being shuttered by the federal Department of Labor under the Trump administration.
The program serves roughly 35,000 students annually at more than 120 centers across the country. About 308 students arrived at Virginia’s two Job Corps centers between July and April. More than 12,500 employees work at Job Corps centers nationwide, according to a fact sheet released by the organization.
The mental toll of the federal upheaval
Job Corps was launched in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson as a part of his War on Poverty domestic reform. It’s a U.S. government-sponsored residential education and job training program for low-income youth between the ages of 16 and 24 who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The program is administered by the Labor Department through funding appropriated by Congress. Its goal is to provide the vocational training that young people will need to secure employment, for those who may not have access to resources. The program has trained more than 3 million youths and young adults across the country since it started.
Job Corps gives students about two years to earn as many certifications as they would like, said Kelley Crusenberry, the career training director at the Blue Ridge Job Corps center. Students can apply for an extension of about six months to a year, depending on the program. They receive a biweekly stipend, which doubles when the students reach 181 days in the program. They also get three full meals a day plus a snack at night, and have access to free laundry and transportation services.
News of the potential shutdown was upsetting to students, including Moyer. She said she became scared when she learned about the federal agency’s effort to close Job Corps sites like the Blue Ridge center in Marion, where she lives and receives training.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen next, and that’s not a good feeling coming from already being homeless before here and knowing that without the benefits of the program I would just be going back to where I was,” she said.
The agency announced at the end of May that the federally contracted Job Corps sites would be shut down amid spending cuts. A lawsuit was filed June 3 by Job Corps contractors to halt the federal agency’s effort to end the program.
During a June 4 hearing before the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer laid out the Trump administration’s plan to close those facilities.
“The Labor Department is looking for ways to streamline federal programs and evaluate how taxpayer dollars are spent. In line with this approach, the budget proposed to eliminate ineffective training interventions, and that does include the Job Corps program,” Chavez-DeRemer told the committee.
She pointed to a recent report put together by the agency, which, she said, showed that more than 14,000 serious incidents were reported at Job Corps centers. Chavez-DeRemer said those incidents can include sexual assaults, physical violence or drug use.
Crusenberry said those incidents could be as small as one person bumping into another as they come out of a shower. No matter how small, each incident must be logged, Crusenberry said. If a student tests positive for drug use when they come into Job Corps, they’re retested in 37-41 days, she said.
“As long as they are at 50% decrease, they get to stay,” Crusenberry said. “It doesn’t mean that you have an active drug issue on center, which is the way it got portrayed.”
Chavez-DeRemer also said that it costs $20,000 more per year on average for a student to attend Job Corps than it does for a student to attend Harvard University. Under that assumption, it would cost around $106,000 per student each year to attend Job Corps, as the yearly cost of attendance at Harvard for the 2025-2026 academic year is estimated to be around $86,000, including tuition, room and board. The Department of Labor has since walked back that claim. The agency now says that the average cost per student, per year in Job Corps in fiscal year 2023 was $80,284.65. That includes housing, meals and training.
Staff members at Blue Ridge Job Corps have asserted that the data in the Labor Department’s transparency report was cherry-picked by the federal agency to cast the program in a negative light.
“When you talk about [serious incident reports], you have to report everything that’s gone not the right way,” Crusenberry said. “A broken freezer, a sprained ankle, things like that. So they’ve kind of picked and [chosen] what they wanted to pull out there. They’ve really made Job Corps look like it’s not doing well, not doing its job.”
On June 9, a judge in New York halted the federal agency’s effort to close the program through a temporary restraining order. Judge Andrew Carter Jr. extended that restraining order to this Wednesday after a June 17 hearing.
The back and forth has been the most unbearable part of the ordeal, Moyer said.
“We don’t really know what to do. We just kind of have to go to class now and test and act like things are normal even though they’re not,” she said. “And of course staff has to be looking for jobs because they can’t just have a lapse without working, and that’s also scary for us students because if Job Corps does get saved we can’t work as a center if we don’t have staff. It’s just a really scary time for everybody.”
Heather Goodpasture, an outreach and admissions counselor, said she was told on May 30 that the Blue Ridge Job Corps center was to close no later than June 30. Staff was also initially told to send students home by June 3, but received an extension until mid-month.
“We are just kind of stuck right now,” she said, as they await the outcome of the court hearing.
Most of the 92 students at the Blue Ridge center were either sent home or away from the job corps residences after the May 30 notice. Blue Ridge students come from Virginia cities, including Richmond, Roanoke, Norfolk and Hampton, and some come from out of state, including Pennsylvania, Delaware and North Carolina.
As one of the smallest Job Corps sites in the U.S., Blue Ridge was in a better position to help find places to live for students who didn’t have access to housing outside of the center, Goodpasture said.
“The ones that didn’t were lingering until we could find somewhere for them,” she said.
The center has brought back around 50 students after the temporary restraining order was issued by the New York judge.
A town faces economic uncertainty
The Blue Ridge Job Corps center opened in 1967 in Marion, a town with a population of roughly 5,600 as of 2023, according to census data. The center, which is run by a federal contractor, focuses primarily on helping students gain health care certifications in a region that is considered a health care desert.
About 75 staff members work at the center. They, along with the residential students, have contributed to Marion’s economy.
“I’m assuming we’re going to lose 70-plus jobs, and that’s bad for the economy here in Marion and Smyth County,” Marion Mayor Avery Cornett said. “I hate to see the closure because the Job Corps has been a vital part of Marion.”
The Marion Town Council passed a resolution on June 2 to urge the federal government to continue to fund the Blue Ridge center, along with those at risk of closure across the country.
The resolution called the center a true asset to the town, surrounding communities and Southwest Virginia, and noted that it provides services and opportunities to improve the area while giving young adults the skills to better their lives and futures.
“While our town supports government efficiency, the Blue Ridge Job Corps is an essential center that prides itself in helping others and has provided endless community service support by providing education, economic impact, and a strong volunteer base to help our Town and community,” the resolution said.
Job Corps a lifeline for health care in a care desert
Nurses, certified nursing assistants, other medical assistants, patient care technicians and others receive the education they need to serve the community at the Blue Ridge center in a part of the state with a noticeable shortage of health care workers.
“Some of these students could have settled here and provided health care for a lot of people that are underserved,” Goodpasture said. “It’s hurting the health care system all the way around, especially around here.”
Some of the licensed practical nursing students could transfer to a local community college, but all of the other programs are standalone offerings that are run through the federal Department of Labor. For those students, transferring is not an option.
“If they leave here without their certifications, they have nothing. They have absolutely nothing to show for it, and I think that’s one of the worst parts,” Goodpasture said.
The Mel Leaman Free Clinic in Marion normally has a Job Corps student on staff. That student picks up part-time shifts and covers for the clinic’s full-time nurse if need be, said Susan Ferraro, the clinic’s executive director.
“We depend on them a lot because, the free clinic, we can’t always afford the help that we need,” she said. “It would hurt us if we lost them.”
The Mel Leaman Free Clinic sees residents of Smyth, Grayson, Washington and Russell counties who are uninsured and income-eligible. All of the health care providers at the clinic are volunteers. They provide routine health care along with oral health care, mental health care, physical therapy and free medication for diabetes and other ailments. The clinic had 294 patients and about 1,579 appointments across those patients in 2024, Ferraro said.
“We are at the mercy of our volunteers. We can only see patients on days that we have providers,” she said. “The Job Corps students do fill a need for us.”
Ferraro worked at Job Corps as a work-based learning coordinator and admissions counselor before she became the executive director of the free clinic.
“I know firsthand what it does for the girls,” she said. “Some come in that are basically homeless and this is their chance to have a roof over their heads, food and someone that’s going to be supportive and help them to get the training and education that they need to move into employment.”
Staff remains in limbo
Day-to-day work at the Blue Ridge center has been effectively halted by the program’s uncertainty.
“This back and forth has pretty much stopped my whole department,” Goodpasture said.
In mid-March, staff was notified that the government-run background checks needed to admit new students had been halted, she said.
“You can’t go any further in the [student] application process until you get that back,” she said. “We kind of knew something was coming down the pipeline when we couldn’t do those background checks.
“Some of our students hadn’t been here two weeks when everything shut down,” she added.
Some of the work operating systems used by her department were shut off on May 30, the day the shutdown was announced. Since the temporary restraining order has been in place, staff members have been able to access those systems again.
“But it’s kind of pointless for us to do what we normally do because we have no idea if this program is even going to exist,” she said. “We’re just kind of in limbo. … It’s very frustrating.”
Goodpasture has had multiple conversations with her team regarding multiple different dates that their employment could end, because of the uncertainty at the federal level.
“It’s very hard emotionally to have to go with this back and forth.”
What do Virginia’s lawmakers think?
Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, did not answer directly when asked if he supported the federal Department of Labor’s effort to close Job Corps centers.
“While it is my understanding that the Marion Job Corps Center had better results and I was supportive of their program, on the national level, many of the other 98 contracted job corps programs were not particularly effective,” he said in a statement.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office did not directly respond when asked if the governor supported the federal agency’s efforts to close the program. Instead, Peter Finnochio, Youngkin’s press secretary, said the rapid response team from Virginia Works, the state’s workforce development agency, was “engaged” as soon as the initial closure was announced to provide a “full suite” of job assistance services for Job Corps employees who could be laid off.
He added that students would be able to access any services that would be available to any other job seekers through local workforce agencies, including youth programming, if they are under 18.
Virginia state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, who represents Amherst — where the Old Dominion Job Corps center is located — argued that the Trump administration’s effort to end the program hurts the same working-class communities that voted the president into office in November.
“This is clearly not going to help — it’s not going to help rural economic development, it’s not going to help Amherst or the surrounding communities,” Deeds said.
State Sen. Mark Peake, a Republican who represents nearby Lynchburg, said he hopes the job corps centers don’t close.
Seventy-eight students were enrolled at the Old Dominion Job Corps Center as of mid-June. Of those, nearly 18% were considered homeless or unhoused. There were 134 staff members employed at the site, in jobs ranging from security and facility maintenance to cafeteria, academic teachers, vocational instructors and administration.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., pushed back against the federal agency’s effort to close the program. He argued that Congress had appropriated funds for the program through June 30, 2026, and he said that President Donald Trump does not have the unilateral ability to halt that funding without passing a rescission package through Congress to claw back those appropriations.
“Congress has created this and funded this program for a reason, putting these kids out high and dry, mid-stream, programs not done, is very very devastating to them and those who are their instructors and counselors,” he said. “We can’t give up on them.”
Where would Job Corps’ homeless students go?
About eight of the current students at the Blue Ridge center were homeless, including Moyer, said Crusenberry. Those students, she said, were absolutely panicked by news of the shutdown.
“Job Corps serves a population that needs it: homeless, disadvantaged youth, those that cannot make it on the college side of things, this is their opportunity to get that vocation trade — which is what the government preaches but yet they want to pull it away,” Crusenberry said. She believes the Job Corps program needs to be looked at and revamped, but not shut down. The changes she suggested included reworking the way Job Corps centers are graded against one another, provide access to updated technology for the students, and adjust the age requirements for prospective students.
Before she joined the Blue Ridge Job Corps program in October, Moyer would sometimes stay at a shelter in Roanoke. Sometimes she would sleep outside on the greenway or in a nearby park, she said.
“I was homeless and looking to further my education in a way that wasn’t so financially hard,” she said. “I had gone to college before but it ended up being way too expensive and I had to leave.”
She began to look for a paid certified nursing assistant program and found the Job Corps website. She applied online, and a couple of days later, she got a call from the organization’s outreach coordinator, who helped her get the enrollment process started. While at Job Corps, she began to feel like she could keep a job and support herself, Moyer said.
“That was the hope of coming to Job Corps, was that I would build a foundation and find support and be able to leave with the skills needed to actually start my life and not be stuck where I was,” she said.
If Job Corps is able to continue, she hopes to finish her trade, work in health care and save enough money to go to college and study to become a music therapist to help other youths who struggle with their mental health.
Correction, June 25, 2025, 3:40 p.m.: This story was updated to accurately reflect how often students test positive for drug use upon arrival at Job Corps.