Labor Department News Releases Update

Ricardo stands on his tiptoes, straining to reach into a tangle of branches to retrieve a cluster of coffee berries. He makes his way along the row of trees, each laden with hundreds of the tiny fruit, dropping them carefully in his basket. He repeats this process for hours. His unprotected hands and arms are covered with scratches, his bare feet and legs bitten by bugs, his skin scorched by the hot sun. At 10 years old, this is the world he knows; he has never seen the inside of a classroom.

Now well into its fourth year, one of the worst droughts in California in more than a century continues to cause economic insecurity for many families in the region, particularly in the agriculture sector. A recent University of California Davis study estimates 18,000 people lost jobs because of drought. These losses leave working families struggling to make ends meet, and today the Department of Labor is announcing up to $18 million in National Dislocated Worker Grant (formerly referred to as National Emergency Grants) funding to the state of California to provide jobs for workers dislocated by the drought, with $3 million released initially.