Detroit Youth Employment: A Youth Policy Lab brown bag
Date & time
Location
Brian Jacob
Co-Director, Youth Policy Lab
In early 2017, the Youth Policy Lab at the University of Michigan established a partnership with the agencies in Detroit that manage Grow Detroit’s Young Talent (GDYT) – City Connect and the Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation. Our goal was to provide technical assistance and help them utilize existing administrative data to better understand which youth applied and participated and how participation influences youth outcomes.
Brian Jacob will present the initial findings from the Youth Policy Lab’s evaluation work for GDYT, which centers around educational outcomes for applicants and participants. We find that youth who participated in GDYT see improvement on some educational measures post-participation, though we will discuss the extent to which selection bias remains in our analysis.
About the program:
GDYT is a summer employment program for youth aged 14-24 in Detroit. The program was created by the Detroit Youth Employment Consortium (DYEC), a private-public partnership dedicated to advancing Detroit youths’ educational and career development through increased access to quality employment opportunities. In 2017, over 15,000 youth applied to GDYT. Of those, over 5,200 worked in GDYT-subsidized positions and another 1,923 worked in positions fully funded by affiliated companies.