At-Risk Youths Lose Connection to New Lives as Job Corps Idles

The U.S. Labor Department’s Job Corps program remains a pillar of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1960s War on Poverty, giving young adults a path to escape unstable home situations and learn an occupation that will make them self-sufficient.

But with the coronavirus keeping the program’s 121 residential campuses largely closed since March, the Labor Department is increasingly struggling to keep the 30,000 students from drifting into the unknown.

At least 1,600 have left the program. Thousands more haven’t been provided computers they need to meaningfully participate remotely—to the extent online education is possible in fields such as construction or culinary ...