On June 26, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the National Youth Administration (NYA), as part of the Second New Deal’s effort to provide work relief. NYA provided part-time work, schooling, and vocational training for unemployed youths between 16 and 25 years of age, and aimed at keeping youths in school and out of the saturated employment market.
In 1933, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) inaugurated New Deal efforts to help young people, who had one of the highest unemployment rates in the Great Depression, with a successful pilot student aid program. (The Civilian Conservation Corps also provided work for young men.) With FERA being phased out in 1935, President Roosevelt established the NYA after such figures as Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry L. Hopkins urged him to address the problem of youth unemployment. Originally part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the NYA was transferred to the Federal Security Agency in 1939 and was placed under the War Manpower Commission in 1942 until it ceased operations in 1943. Aubrey Williams, a southern liberal, served as NYA director.
The NYA put a majority of its resources into keeping youth out of the workforce by providing high school and college students part-time jobs so they could remain in school, finish their education, and become productive assets for the American economy. For high school and precollege youth who went to college, the NYA provided apprenticeships or internships in areas including public planning and research and also cooperated with state and local agencies
Who filled available positions with NYA youths. “Learning by doing” became an NYA motto.
Williams saw the NYA college aid programs as shaking up the existing educational establishments by having the schools accept working - and middle-class unemployed students, who would receive NYA money to pay their college costs. To qualify for NYA assistance, students had to have a strong academic background and be able to carry at least three-quarters of the normal academic course load. Participating institutions were required to supervise the NYA students’ academic progress. NYA students worked in such diverse areas as surveys and statistical work, ground and building maintenance, and library services. The NYA college program later became one model for GI Bill OF Rights educational provisions.
Williams’s interest in promoting racial equality led the NYA to establish a Division of Negro Affairs, with educator Mary McLeod Bethune as its director. She used her prominent government position and her leadership of the Black Cabinet to lobby for more inclusion of African Americans in the New Deal. The NYA was one of the first federal agencies to have racially integrated programs, teaching African Americans skills necessary for employment in the industrial economy and creating a college aid program for black students. Blacks who participated in NYA-sponsored programs were later commended for their efforts in defense industries.
In 1936, less than a year after its beginning, the NYA enrolled about 600,000 young people. Its peak came in April 1937 with 630,000 youths; the lowest point was in October 1937 (after Roosevelt had cut relief spending, helping to bring on the recession of 1937-1938) with 360,000 youths. By 1943, the NYA had provided assistance to more than 2 million young people. NYA students were divided fairly equally between the sexes and were racially proportionate to the nation’s population. Males often worked in construction and technical workshops, females in “socially useful work” including assisting in libraries, holding clerical positions, and serving as school aides.
As unemployment declined in the early 1940s because of the beginning stages of mobilization for World War II, NYA programs shifted away from education and toward vocational training for defense industry. Williams received high praise for his foresight and his contribution to the war effort, and student trainees, including blacks and females, were quickly hired in their vocational fields as positions became available. Student programs not involving the war effort were almost all dropped by 1942; and to trim federal expenditures and roll back New Deal relief programs, Congress terminated the NYA in 1943, deeming it no longer essential. But during its tenure, the NYA provided valuable financial assistance, education, and vocational training to young people and contributed to the pool of workers as the nation emerged from the Great Depression.
See also children.
Further reading: Richard A. Reiman, The New Deal and American Youth: Ideas and Ideals in a Depression Decade (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992).
—Anne Rothfield
World History
