The city tapped key partners for the initiative, including a Houston startup. Photo courtesy

City officials and business leaders in Houston are recruiting employers to collectively offer at least 12,000 paid jobs and internships this summer for local 16- to 24-year-olds.

Organizers on March 8 kicked off this year’s Hire Houston Youth initiative. It encourages employers in the public, private, and philanthropic sectors to bring aboard youth for summertime jobs and internships.

One of the program's partner is Ampersand, a Houston-based startup and tech platform that has designed a career-readiness curriculum for this age group. In partnership with the City of Houston, Ampersand customized a portion of its curriculum to upskill and prepare young Houstonians for the workforce across 35 lessons, five modules, and four hours of content — all of which provide essential job skills ranging from email best practices to mental health management in the workplace.

Employers can sign up for Hire Houston Youth online. The deadline for youth to apply for jobs or internships through this program has been extended from March 11 to April 8.

“Employment plays a pivotal role in reducing gender, ethnic, racial, and other social inequalities,” Mayor Sylvester Turner says in a news release. “Therefore, providing meaningful employment experiences for our youth is in the best interest of all, including young people, their communities, and Houston as a whole.”

In 2021, as the city coped with the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hire Houston Youth offered more than 9,500 opportunities. This year, Turner hopes the program can produce at least 12,000 jobs and internships, and as many as 15,000.

The National League of Cities recently awarded a $150,000 grant to Hire Houston Youth. In addition to the grant, Houston will receive assistance from National League of Cities staff and other experts to advance the city’s efforts to expand STEM career opportunities for marginalized young people.

The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. ranks as the highest among all age groups. In the pre-pandemic year of 2019, the national unemployment rate for the 16 to 24 age group stood at 8.4 percent. No other age group had an unemployment rate above 4.1 percent in 2019.

The jobless rate for people of color and lower-income people in this age group has historically been higher than the overall rate for that age group.

The pandemic exacerbated unemployment woes for 16- to 24-year-olds in the Houston area around the country. Data compiled by the Schultz Family Foundation and Mathematica shows that during the peak of the pandemic, youth unemployment rates in the Houston area ranged between a low of 12.6 percent from July to December 2020 and a high of 16.1 percent from January to June 2021.

The Measure of America project estimates that more than 4.1 million Americans in the 16-24 group are neither working nor attending school. In Harris County, 13.4 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds in Harris County met that definition in 2017, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“The years 16-24 are crucial for the development of human capital — through activities such as education and workforce preparation that pay dividends in the form of higher wages, lower unemployment, and other benefits later in life. Yet even before the pandemic, many young people were disconnected from school and work and the economic opportunities that follow,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas says in a 2021 report.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

3 Houston innovators who made headlines in May 2025

Innovators to Know

Editor's note: Houston innovators are making waves this month with revolutionary VC funding, big steps towards humanoid robotics, and software that is impacting the agriculture sector. Here are three Houston innovators to know right now.

Zach Ellis, founder and partner of South Loop Ventures

Zach Ellis. Photo via LinkedIn

Zach Ellis Jr., founder and general partner of South Loop Ventures, says the firm wants to address the "billion-dollar blind spot" of inequitable distribution of venture capital to underrepresented founders of color. The Houston-based firm recently closed its debut fund for more than $21 million. Learn more.

Ty Audronis, CEO and founder of Tempest Droneworx

Ty Audronis, CEO and founder of Tempest Droneworx

Ty Audronis, center. Photo via LinkedIn.

Ty Audronis and his company, Tempest Droneworx, made a splash at SXSW Interactive 2025, winning the Best Speed Pitch award at the annual festival. The company is known for it flagship product, Harbinger, a software solution that agnostically gathers data at virtually any scale and presents that data in easy-to-understand visualizations using a video game engine. Audronis says his company won based on its merits and the impact it’s making and will make on the world, beginning with agriculture. Learn more.

Nicolaus Radford, CEO of Persona AI

Nicolaus Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus RoboticsNicolaus Radford. Image via LinkedIn

Houston-based Persona AI and CEO Nicolaus Radford continue to make steps toward deploying a rugged humanoid robot, and with that comes the expansion of its operations at Houston's Ion. Radford and company will establish a state-of-the-art development center in the prominent corner suite on the first floor of the building, with the expansion slated to begin in June. “We chose the Ion because it’s more than just a building — it’s a thriving innovation ecosystem,” Radford says. Learn more.

Houston university to launch artificial intelligence major, one of first in nation

BS in AI

Rice University announced this month that it plans to introduce a Bachelor of Science in AI in the fall 2025 semester.

The new degree program will be part of the university's department of computer science in the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing and is one of only a few like it in the country. It aims to focus on "responsible and interdisciplinary approaches to AI," according to a news release from the university.

“We are in a moment of rapid transformation driven by AI, and Rice is committed to preparing students not just to participate in that future but to shape it responsibly,” Amy Dittmar, the Howard R. Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said in the release. “This new major builds on our strengths in computing and education and is a vital part of our broader vision to lead in ethical AI and deliver real-world solutions across health, sustainability and resilient communities.”

John Greiner, an assistant teaching professor of computer science in Rice's online Master of Computer Science program, will serve as the new program's director. Vicente Ordóñez-Román, an associate professor of computer science, was also instrumental in developing and approving the new major.

Until now, Rice students could study AI through elective courses and an advanced degree. The new bachelor's degree program opens up deeper learning opportunities to undergrads by blending traditional engineering and math requirements with other courses on ethics and philosophy as they relate to AI.

“With the major, we’re really setting out a curriculum that makes sense as a whole,” Greiner said in the release. “We are not simply taking a collection of courses that have been created already and putting a new wrapper around them. We’re actually creating a brand new curriculum. Most of the required courses are brand new courses designed for this major.”

Students in the program will also benefit from resources through Rice’s growing AI ecosystem, like the Ken Kennedy Institute, which focuses on AI solutions and ethical AI. The university also opened its new AI-focused "innovation factory," Rice Nexus, earlier this year.

“We have been building expertise in artificial intelligence,” Ordóñez-Román added in the release. “There are people working here on natural language processing, information retrieval systems for machine learning, more theoretical machine learning, quantum machine learning. We have a lot of expertise in these areas, and I think we’re trying to leverage that strength we’re building.”