Ready to work: Sonia Aguilera

Ready To Work is a new series of profiles featuring people in Richmond who are looking for jobs. With unemployment at 18.5 percent, Richmond has a rich array of untapped skills among the city’s residents. In this and coming stories, Richmond Confidential focuses on the people and possibilities in the city’s economy. Meet Sonia Aguilera.

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Youth employment program on the rise

Richmond’s YouthWORKS, a city-run youth-employment program, employed 705 local teens and young adults ages 16-21 last summer at 140 Bay Area public and private work sites. The civic youth jobs program is one the nation’s largest in proportion to the population of the city it serves.

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In tough economy, pain trickles to the bottom

A few hundred yards off the Santa Fe Channel’s waters, beneath the moving silhouettes of the massive tankers that float to dock, lies the little stretch of railroad track that serves as a gathering point for Richmond’s men and women who scavenge for scrap.

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