The fight over job training for younger people. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. A federal judge has stopped the labor department from halting operations at the federal Job Corps program, something the Trump administration was trying to do. A nonprofit suit to block the move, and now a court has said that while the lawsuit plays out, that program has to

stay open for business. Job Corps, tagline careers begin here as a program founded in 1964 by

President Johnson to give teenagers and young adults training in trades like construction or

car repair, marketplaces Savannah Peters reports.

24-year-old Zechiel Wilbur of Omaha has had a rugged couple of years.

He says a fight with a family member landed him in jail.

Once he got out, he struggled to readjust and started using drugs.

I was just rotting away in my bed every single day, high out of my mind.

So I signed up to come to Job Corps because I thought of it as a way out.

Wilbur has been living at the Pine Ridge Job Corps Center in Shadron, Nebraska for six months now. He says he's sober. He's in an apprenticeship program for painting. He's actually calling from a job site.

So right now we're working for an elderly woman in town.

Painting her house for minimum wage and racking up on-the-job hours he needs to graduate.

But this job core center is on the list targeted for closure.

It would be devastating. I wouldn't have anywhere to go.

Wilbur says he'd probably end up living out of his car in his old neighborhood.

The Trump administration says costs for the residential job corps program are too high.

It spends $80,000 a year on the average trainee.

Because it's so intensive, it's also very expensive. That's economist Bert

Barno, who studies workforce training programs at George Washington University. Plus, he says research

on the program's outcomes is mixed. Teenagers who go through the program don't seem to do better on the job

market than their peers who don't. But the older people who go through the program don't seem to do better on the job market than their peers who don't.

But?

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