Baltimore’s YouthWorks program began its 50th year of operations this week. The month-long initiative aims to address violence and poverty among city youth, and now serves as a template for cities around the country working on similar objectives.
YouthWorks is spearheaded by the Baltimore City Mayor’s Office of Employment Development, which works to place Baltimore residents ages 14 to 21 in various workplaces around the city for five weeks. Participants will earn Maryland’s current minimum wage of $13.25 an hour.
This year’s program has garnered 7,910 applications, with jobs offered to 7,890 young people were offered summer jobs at a rate of $13.25 per hour. In 2022, 5,819 participated in the program.
About 88% of the expected participants are Black, and over half are female. Over the past decade, YouthWorks has offered over 80,000 summer jobs to Baltimore residents.
Of the almost 600 worksites that applied to hire or host YouthWorks participants this year, over a quarter were nonprofit organizations, 114 were for-profit, 32 were community organizations, and 68 were city or state agencies. These businesses included the Baltimore Orioles, Johns Hopkins University, RISE Arts, and The Pennsylvania Avenue Neighborhood Association.
Since many small businesses work with YouthWorks, the program agrees to pay participants’ salaries for “host” businesses with five or fewer employees, while employers with more than five employees are classified as “hiring” businesses and cover the expenses of their participants.
To finance the program, the Baltimore City Council included allocations from the General Fund and American Rescue Plan Act funds in the adopted FY2023 budget. The FY2024 budget signed by Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott on June 20 includes further fund designation for the program, from the Baltimore Casino Fund.
“A big part of our work in reducing crime and protecting our young people is to provide them with opportunities that inspire our youth, occupy their time, invest in their potential, and help them earn money along the way,” said Scott.
The YouthWorks program has inspired lawmakers in other cities to emulate its success and pilot parallel projects of their own. In 2012, the Obama Administration created the Summer Jobs+ initiative which sought to help connect young people across America with jobs. Some localities elected to continue the initiative, citing the long-term success of YouthWorks in Baltimore.
According to a report published by Baltimore’s Promise in 2021, 13.4% of youth in Baltimore are not in school and not working, down from 21.4% in 2015. The study also found that the unemployment rate for youth has gone from 25.3% in 2015 to 18.8% in 2019.
“YouthWorks has been a long-standing program in Baltimore that connects our young people to phenomenal opportunities across a variety of industries in the city,” said Mayor Scott. “As a product of this program, I can confidently say that YouthWorks exposes our youth to pathways and careers that they may not have considered before, ultimately to help them become the best version of themselves.”
