Paid Internships, Courtesy of the Stimulus

LANSING, Mich.—The teenagers tore at the ceiling of this
old elementary school as though they were seeking revenge for a tortured scholastic past. There were eight of them here today, young construction workers who didn’t have any construction skills but who did come cheap. Free, really. Their $7.50 salaries are paid by the stimulus plan, making them free labor for Spartan Internet Consulting, the private company that’s turning this old school into office space and a community center. All of them are fresh-faced, some with teenage peach fuzz, others with young heads stuck on top of already-chiseled bodies.

These are what created jobs look like. They’re short-term, certainly, but they’re also real. During our visit I didn’t catch any of the kids slacking on the job. Our impressive tour guide was a construction management student named Nate Mahoney (pictured at left), who was in charge of the worksite along with another young guy named Anu. (Nate was hired by Spartan and isn’t stimulus-funded.) His voice brimmed with pride and excitement for the construction site and what the kids were doing with it. He told us that Spartan couldn’t be overhauling the place without the youth workers. It was a charming display of paternalism, but it’s unclear whether he was exaggerating. In theory, Spartan could have afforded to renovate the school if the youth workers weren’t there to offer cheap labor. Sure, they’d have to pay more for experienced workers. But that would have made the project less profitable, not impossible. Nevertheless, for the kids, the stimulus has worked.

The school they’re working on won’t be transformed into office space until October. For now it’s a mess of stripped urinals, chalkboards, and lockers. Because of the empty rooms, the light in the building billows through like it’s an old Italian church. Amidst the rubble one youth worker, 18-year old Zach Lansing (pictured below), told us he’d been looking for a job for a year. He finally got hooked up with the youth employment program through his church, and it’s given him a chance to get a job even though “he didn’t know how to use a grinder” at the beginning of the summer.

Come August Spartan Internet will sit down with the kids and work on their résumés, hoping to get them another job once their stimulus funding runs out. By then Zach will be back at high school, finishing out his senior year. Afterward he’s either going to Lansing Community College or Ohio State on a football scholarship. (It’s apparent he’s a linebacker before he tells you he’s a linebacker.) By then he’ll know what it’s like to have his education supported by free money.

(Photos by David Backer)