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State budget cuts and the loss of millions in federal stimulus funds is threatening to seriously downsize the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program. According to the city, 52,255 kids were hired last year out of 139,597 applicants. This year, if the budget cuts stand, fewer than 18,000 will get jobs while more than 100,000 are again expected to apply. The program serves youth between 14 and 24, many of them low income.

Brooklyn City Councilman Lewis Fidler recently held a council hearing on cuts to the program. He says not only will kids have nothing to keep them busy this summer, they also won't have money to spend. Fidler says in 2009 kids earned $48 million and spent $43 million. "That's $40 million that's not going to be spent on school supplies, clothes, and food right here in New York City," Fidler says.

The young people are hired for a variety of positions. They work in the offices of elected officials, in small businesses, and at hospitals. According to the Department of Youth and Community Development, the agency overseeing summer jobs, 41 percent of youth help staff more than 2,400 free summer camps and daycare centers.

Betsy Fabricant helps run Visions Center on Blindness in Rockland County, a camp that serves about 600 disabled people each summer. Fabricant says roughly 10 percent of her staff are hired through the city's summer jobs program. "If we don't have enough staff, we have to limit the number of people we can serve in any particular session, and that's hard," she says.

The state is proposing to cut $19 million from the youth employment program and another $18 million in federal stimulus funds will disappear -- it was a one-time funding stream unavailable this year. The state money typically comes from extra welfare funds but an increase in case loads and an increase in the monthly public assistance grants means there's nothing left over for summer jobs and dozens of other programs serving low-income families.

Fidler and other city officials were hoping that the recently passed federal jobs bill would include money for youth employment but that didn't happen.