Job Corps is a program administered by the United States Department of Labor that offers free education and vocational training to young men and women ages 16 to 24. Mission and purpose Job Corps' mission is to help young people ages 16 through 24 to improve the quality of their lives through vocational and academic training aimed at gainful employment and career pathways. History The Job Corps was originally designed by a task force established by Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz reporting to his Manpower Administrator Sam Merrick. In 1962, the youth unemployment rate was twice the non-youth unemployment rate and the purpose of the initiative was to create a program whereby Youth members of the program could spend 1/2 of their time improving national parks and forests and the other 1/2 of their time improving their basic education skills which were severely limiting their occupational accomplishments. The Job Corps Task Force initially recommended that Job Corps programs be limited to Federal National Parks, National Forests, and other Federal Lands. By the Kennedy assassination in 1963, the Job Corps' operational plans, costs, and budgets had been well developed, including coordination with the U. S. Forest Service and the National Park Service, and Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) executed among the agencies. Initiating legislation and budgetary authorizations were drafted by the Kennedy Administration and introduced in both houses of Congress. When President Johnson and his planning staff decided on the War on Poverty, most of the proposed programs would take more than a year to even start. However the Job Corps idea was well along in the planning stage and could be deployed rapidly, so the Labor Department Job Corps Task Force was appointed to the Task force for the War on Poverty, and the Job Corps was slated to be the initial operational program. Job Corps was therefore initiated as the central program of the Johnson Administration's War on Poverty, part of his domestic agenda known as the Great Society. Sargent Shriver, the first Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, modeled the program on the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Established in the 1930s as an emergency relief program, the CCC provided room, board, and employment to thousands of unemployed young people. Though the CCC was discontinued after World War II, Job Corps built on many of its methods and strategies. The first National Director of the Job Corps program was