Business
Chicago Program Put 30,000 Young People to Work This Summer
As summer nears a close, thousands of young people are wrapping up their summer jobs.
The city’s One Summer Chicago program put 30,000 young people to work this year, providing jobs in transportation, health care, business and more.
Mayor Brandon Johnson says he’s been working to expand the program and increase youth hiring in the city, surpassing a goal to provide funding for 1,000 more positions. Last summer, Johnson expanded the program with an additional 2,400 positions. He has said that investing more in services like summer jobs programs can help reduce crime by providing productive activities for young people.
The program partners with community organizations and businesses to provide young people ages 14 to 24 with paid summer jobs. Program participants are placed in jobs with the Chicago Housing Authority, the Chicago Park District, small businesses or community-based organizations.
Natasha Smith-Walker, executive director of the science and technology education organization Project Exploration, said young employees can take the skills they learn from their jobs to various communities throughout the city.
“It’s a little bit of looking at how you deliver STEM education programs, partnering with really amazing STEM institutions here in the city of Chicago to be able to train them, and then going back into their communities into Austin, some South Side locations and delivering those programs as well,” Smith-Walker said. “We try to make sure young people have a really deep breadth and depth of how to do STEM education programming. It’s also really nice to see the learners see themselves in the workforce.”
Kim Robinson, vice president of workforce development at the Chicago Transit Authority, said the program provides much more than just a summer job.
“We teach them interviewing skills, workplace etiquette, the balance with health and wellness, financial fortitude — because for some of them this is their first paycheck,” Robinson said. “We also teach them branding and career paths just to expose them to different aspects of transportation.”
The CTA has seen an uptick in One Summer Chicago applications. Over 300 interns were hired this summer through the program, a number Robinson said was record-breaking.
The Hope Center Foundation, a community development organization in Roseland, just joined the program this year as a main job site and employed 25 young people from the neighborhood.
Shenita Muse, the group’s executive director, said the program contributes to positive transformation and growth in the Roseland and West Pullman areas.
As many young people transition out of school and into early careers, Muse said they need more support and guidance in the job market. A summer job can also pave the way for career building and access to opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have.
“We look at this as an opportunity to give our youth a chance to build their future,” Muse said. “It’s about preparing the next generation to lead, to create opportunities… For the youth that we serve, we want them to know that generational wealth is obtainable for them and the first step to generational wealth is not a job but a career.”
