City Name: Miami, Florida
Population: 442,241
Region: South
Partner: City of Miami
Problem: Young people who are unable to access consistent work before the age of 25 will earn 44% less over the course of their lives. Additionally, youth employment provides opportunities to ease the financial strain on young people. Research has found that most young adults in America do not have stable access to financial security, nor to the conditions that support it.
Solution: In 2014, the City of Miami launched “Summer Jobs Connect Miami,” a summer youth employment program designed to provide participants with both a meaningful employment opportunity and a robust financial management education. Summer Jobs Connect Miami hires residents between the ages of sixteen and nineteen from the cities low- or moderate-income communities. They are then given the opportunity to work for the City of Miami for 29 hours per week for a total of nine weeks. Program participants are required to open a non-custodial savings account, identify a savings goal, and meet regularly with a mentor who provides targeted financial education, including reviewing their budget and their progress towards meeting their stated savings goal.
Outcome: Since its founding, Summer Jobs Connect Miami has hired over 1,800 youth and paid them an aggregate of $4 million in wages. Most participants have opened savings accounts and collectively, participants have saved roughly $1 million. Notably, though, in its earliest days, the program was supported with grant funding from Citi Foundation through the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund. Now it is funded entirely through the City of Miami’s General Fund, reflecting the City’s long-term commitment to the program. For the City of Miami, the program serves as a pipeline of potential future employees, offering city staff a low-cost, low-risk opportunity to get to know potential future employees.
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Background
Most public school schedules include a lengthy summer break from classes. During those summer weeks, cities can play an important role in helping to keep youth engaged in supportive, life-enhancing activities. This is especially important for young people from low- and moderate-income households who may not have summer plans. Through summer youth employment programs, cities can help participants to gain valuable work experience, build skills, explore careers and discover personal and professional interests, all of which can help them to achieve economic security and mobility in adulthood.
Problem
Young people with low- and moderate-incomes frequently face barriers to employment, including a lack of work experience. Nor do they necessarily have the tools to manage their finances effectively. As a result, they may struggle to achieve economic stability and mobility in adulthood.
Solution
In 2014, the City of Miami was one of five cities selected by the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund (CFE Fund) to roll out “Summer Jobs Connect,” a municipal summer youth employment program that integrates financial education and access to mainstream financial products and services. Recognizing that for many youth, a summer job is the first opportunity to receive a steady paycheck, Summer Jobs Connect seeks to empower program participants to learn at an early age how to make good financial decisions, the kinds that support long-term financial stability and mobility. That summer, Miami launched “Summer Jobs Connect Miami,” based on the CFE Fund model, and opened it to youth between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, living in one of the city’s low- or moderate-income communities.
Fast forward to 2025 and the City of Miami is now on its twelfth summer of offering Summer Jobs Connect Miami. Over the past decade, the City has learned a great deal about how to make the program work best for Miami’s youth, and has tweaked the CFE Fund model accordingly. Specifically, the City wanted to create a program that offered participants enough hours to ensure that the youth had the ability to gain impactful and hands-on, real-world experience as well as earn a meaningful amount of money. City staff also wanted the chance to get to know the participants better with an eye to creating a pipeline of potential future municipal employees. To that end, the program runs for nine weeks, as compared to the majority of municipal summer youth programs, which only run for a portion of the summer. Additionally, participants work twenty-nine hours a week, as compared to many summer youth programs, which offer part-time work. Consequently, program participants work a total of 261 hours. Given the 2023 hourly wage of $15, participants who successfully complete the program will earn nearly $4,000.
Just as important as the employment opportunities are the program’s financial empowerment components, say City staff. Participants are required to meet biweekly with a financial coach who helps them to learn how to establish a realistic savings goal, create a budget to support it, and manage their income to achieve it. Because program staff consider attendance at these mentoring sessions to be part of participants’ jobs, the youth are paid the same hourly rate for the time spent with their financial coach as the time spent working for the municipality. In the program’s earliest years, adults volunteered as financial coaches. However, program staff eventually determined that the youth felt more comfortable discussing their financial goals with someone closer in age. In response, the City transitioned to a new model in which recent alumni of its AmeriCorps VISTA program are hired to serve as financial coaches.
As part of the financial education component, participants are required to open a savings account upon entering the program in the event they don’t already have one. Notably, the program insists on non-custodial accounts to ensure that the youth is able to maintain control of the money in the account, and has established a relationship with a local credit union to create and service the accounts. In the event that the participant does not have the necessary government-issued identification to open an account, program staff will assist the participant in obtaining the identification card. In years past, program staff have coordinated with the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to secure a mobile DMV unit to produce state identification cards at youth job fairs.
Outcome
Since its founding, Summer Jobs Connect Miami has hired more than 1,800 youth and paid them an aggregate of $4 million in wages. Most participants have opened savings accounts and collectively, participants have saved roughly $1 million. According to program staff, most program participants go on to complete some degree of higher education. Others have entered the private sector or become employees of the City of Miami, including in the departments of parks and recreation, human resources, and grants administration. For the City of Miami, the program serves as a pipeline of potential future employees, offering city staff a low-cost, low-risk opportunity to get to know potential future employees. Each spring, program staff survey various City departments to gauge interest in possibly hiring program participants for the summer.
Notably, though in its earliest days the program was supported with grant funding from Citi Foundation through the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund. However, the program is now funded entirely through the City of Miami’s General Fund, reflecting the City’s long-term commitment to the program. Under current funding, Summer Jobs Connect Miami is able to hire about 120 youth each summer.
Supporting Materials
- Summer Jobs Connect: Where Strong Financial Futures Begin (a report by the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund on their model for embedding financial empowerment in summer youth employment programs.)
- America Saves for Young Workers initiative
How to Make Universal Pre-K a Reality in Your Community
- Lara Burt
- Kathryn Shibuya
Food Access and the One, Big, Beautiful Bill
- Patrick Hain
- Stephanie Martinez-Ruckman
Artificial Intelligence and Public Employees
Development Without Displacement: Centering Communities Through Housing Preservation
- Tomeka Lee
How Little Rock is Addressing Youth Hunger
- Patrick Hain
