Fuzzy apprenticeship math, shutdown countdown, and $52 billion in grants listings.

Plus, the Trump Administration wants something in return on a key workforce grant and DOL (finally) announces $25 million in apprenticeship projects.

Sep 26, 2025

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News you should know about the money that gets people to work.

The final countdown.

We’re four days from the end of the fiscal year. Absent sudden developments or an explanation to the contrary, I expect these grants will expire with it: Workforce Opportunity in Rural Community ($50 million), Susan Harwood Occupational Safety Grants ($12.7 million), and likely unspent Women’s Bureau grants funding (approximately $1 million).

It also looks like we’re heading toward a shutdown, as Democrats have refused to give Republicans more time to negotiate differences in the House and Senate spending bills. It was a busy, busy, busy week, and I literally ran out of space in this newsletter to unpack my full thoughts on the shutdown, including a White House memo that would up and fire a bunch of feds using standards that are hard to extrapolate to federal workforce programs not funded on the usual fiscal year cycle. If we wake up in a shutdown on Wednesday, I’ll share an update on some of the workforce dynamics of the White House threats I haven’t seen reported elsewhere.

The Trump Administration’s apprenticeship numbers move from a statistical armbar to a mathematical headlock.

So I guess the Trump Administration heard their apprenticeship numbers were off?

This week, the Department of Labor updated its official apprenticeship figures for the year. On Tuesday, I wrote about how this didn’t match White House assertions about 180,000 new apprentices since the Inauguration. Instead, DOL had reported only 67,000 new apprentices for the fiscal year that ends in four days. I talked about how this overlapped with frustration about the Administration’s approach to apprenticeship. Apprenticeship is probably the most specific workforce goal of the new Administration, with the President setting a goal of one million active apprentices. Yet, its attempted funding freezes, proposed budget cuts, and other moves seemed to counteract that goal.

The new numbers published Wednesday are a relief because active apprentices continue to grow, but these figures also raise some new concerns. Old and new screenshots are below, with apologies for spacing and neatness since I was on the road this week and used multiple devices for my screengrabs.

Let’s start with the good news: active apprentices have not fallen off for the first time since the pandemic. Still, I don’t think these new numbers will quiet the frustration I have been hearing about the Trump II approach to apprenticeship—namely because I learned of the updated numbers due to folks being annoyed with the Administration’s posting them.

In light of what’s happening with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is an obvious worry here about the trustworthiness of the numbers, and one I’m sure more folks will have when they notice 9,000 apprentices suddenly disappeared from the last full fiscal year of Biden between Tuesday and Wednesday. I wouldn’t read that as suspicious, at least for now. Apprenticeship statistics remain a mess, and it’s entirely plausible that numbers that got put in one year really should have been in another. If the number for 2024 keeps going down, I’ll probably change my mind, but for now, I’m comfortable writing this off as one of the reasons I visibly cringe when I think about apprenticeship stats.

Another reason not to be suspicious? These statistics make the Administration’s bragging about 180,000 new apprentices between January and August look a little ill-advised in retrospect—well, unless they find 37,240 new apprentices in the couch cushions, which is entirely possible because these numbers are a mess.

The numbers remain down—282,036 is much less than 319,275—but what I would be more concerned about is the pace suggested by the White House’s September 1 press release. That press release says 183,000 apprentices signed up “since January”—I’m going to take that as since January 20, Inauguration Day, because the 183,000 looks smaller if it’s from January 1 to September 1.

January 20 to September 1 is 224 days, or about 61 percent of the fiscal year. It’s a rough measure of pace, but 61 percent of the new 2024 numbers for new apprentices—319,275—is 194,758 apprentices, rounding up to avoid the horrifying idea of three quarters of an apprentice. That’s nearly 12,000 more than the 183,000 the White House gushed over on September 1.

The figure I expect the Administration to lean on is the increase in active apprentices, the number it’s trying to push to one million. I think the new number will grow once more state data trickles in, and I would be shocked if the year-to-year growth stayed as low as 3.9 percent. But there are signs for worry there too for Trump II DOL, particularly in light of Administration funding shifts (and the shutdown staffing bomb mentioned above).

The last couple years, the pace of active apprenticeship growth has been about 6 percent. At that pace, we won’t hit one million active apprentices until an election year—2032, specifically.

It’s going to take a hell of a jolt to get growth up, especially in light of headwinds in the economy that suggest cooling in hiring and an employee-friendly hiring market, the mere perception of which could cut away at employers’ willingness to try things like apprenticeship. Here, again, is where the White House’s politics—and the politics of apprenticeship—have set a trap from Trump II DOL. Absent a huge shakeup in the White House and its policy team, the prerogative will continue to be chopping at programs that feed apprenticeship. That’s less support to get apprentices enrolled and fewer sources of incentives for employers to give it a try.

Trump II DOL has privately and publicly signaled it won’t be making any changes to Registered Apprenticeship’s core rules that make registration a bit of a chore, which is understandable given Trump I and Biden political blowback in trying to alter these rules. It will largely toss out the equal-employment opportunity protections, but I have heard from folks that the Trump II DOL thinks it’s helping with these changes that they are worried about how much harder recruitment will be without the steps required by those rules.

And as I wrote Tuesday, it’s also going to be very hard to have states do more of this work for the federal government at current staffing levels (or less) at DOL because someone needs to deputize them —and Republican ideology is tilted against the most practical policy solutions.

What can the Administration do? The most consistent source of workforce funding—Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act formula dollars—is not apprenticeship-friendly because the law favors the quickest and cheapest options. The Administration wants to grant more waivers of WIOA requirements to states, but frankly, I think they’ll need to do some more proactive reinterpretation of current regulations to allow for spending on longer programs with better payoff. Also, Congress will have to not cut that spending in half.

And none of that seems the Administration’s speed, either. Which raises the question: if the Administration is serious about one million active apprentices, is it going to do what it takes to actually get there by 2029?

This week’s grants listings number: $52 billion.

Big money season continues with the return of a $220 million Department of Commerce grant.

What the Trump Administration does and (doesn’t) want in return for a key workforce development grant.
An interesting way to announce apprenticeship awards.
A long-awaited court challenge to rescue a missing grant.