Trump Seeks To End Program For Older Jobless Americans

Nathan Singletary is beyond the traditional retirement age, but he’s only just beginning a new career — helping other low-income, unemployed Americans over age 55 find jobs. Singletary got his job through the half-century-old Senior Community Service Employment Program, a training and placement program underwritten by taxpayers aimed at putting older Americans back into the workforce. “That would mean a great deal of hardship, for me and the people who come to us for help,” Singletary, 67, said last week from his desk at the AARP Foundation’s offices in Harrisburg, Pa. The employment program for seniors that Trump proposes to eliminate provides part-time work at minimum wage. The figure for the whole Senior Community Service Employment Program nationally is lower — at or slightly less than half, according to a 2015 government study Trump cites as evidence for canceling the program. [...] older Americans face unique challenges finding work, including health problems, living in rural areas and the plain fact that they have a limited working future, various studies have shown. A 2012 analysis by a private contractor for the Labor Department found that job placement among those participating in the seniors’ employment program declined with age. The Labor Department says the seniors’ employment program has helped more than 1 million workers in this age group enter the workforce. The document says the seniors could get help instead under the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs, which apply to would-be workers of all ages. Singletary estimates that about 40 percent of people in his area who qualify for the seniors’ training and placement positions “simply are going through the motions, show up one time to fulfill a requirement and you don’t see them again.” About 53 percent of program participants in Harrisburg are white and 42 percent are black, according to Elizabeth Stachiw, the program’s project director for the AARP Foundation, a recipient of the federal grant money.