Why job training programs don't work

Maybe one of the reasons why job training program is not effective has something to do with people's preferences of time. Some people like entertainment in the short-run, while some others like to sacrifice current resources for future gains. Job training programs can be regarded as a program that luring the unemployed, especially presented-oriented youngsters, to forego present gains to get trained for prospective jobs in the future.

But the problem is that no person is rational all the time. For example, we know that smoking can be bad, but still many people get addicted to it; it's known to all that body exercise is good for health, still many people dislike that. The reason may be that people have different time horizon preferences. It's hard to persuade a present-oriented fat person to forego the enjoyment of pizza to go running for future good: he simply hates the pain of running!

So the same reasoning can be applied to the job training program. You simply cannot say that every one prefers long-term gain to short-term one. OR there may be some rational people, who do the cost and benefit analysis. And after their calculation they find that committing crime can get more net benefit than participating job training.