Should we just build the whole boat out of apprenticeship?

Probably not, but given what’s happening to apprenticeship these days, it might be the easiest solution to give to political leaders.

The issue.

Apprenticeship is in a less certain spot in (at least) its fourth presidential administration as the most fervent political answer for the future of the American workforce. The second Trump Administration is doing more to hurt expansion of apprenticeship than help, and congressional enthusiasm for apprenticeship hasn’t resulted in meaningful federal spending.

Is it time to just throw all our resources in the direction of apprenticeship to finally make resources match political enthusiasm?

Explain.

Apprenticeship is now well into its second decade of being the hot new way of filling any skilled job. As members of Congress sour on college, especially Republicans, apprenticeship is usually the go-to alternative mentioned. Given that the idea behind apprenticeship is employers get workers right away tailored to their personal needs, and workers get pretty good jobs that pay them more as they gain skills, it makes a healthy amount of policy sense.

Political enthusiasm hasn’t come with real public dollars for apprentices or infrastructure to support apprentices. A couple weeks ago, the Government Accountability Office released a report on the value of Registered Apprenticeship, the consumer protection device that is the main avenue through which America moves money toward on-the-job training programs that let workers do the job until they master it. GAO found that only 2 percent of workers end up in Registered Apprenticeship if they pass through the main state-led workforce programs forged by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, America’s main source of workforce development funding.

Separately, it also found only 3 percent of apprentices received support from Congress’ year to year appropriations for Registered Apprenticeship, a fund that is only a decade old and only lives so long as Congress is OK with it.

The GAO chalked this up to “voluntary, industry-led nature of [Registered Apprenticeship]” and apprenticeship programs not being “a good fit for certain WIOA participants, who typically seek short-term opportunities[.]” All due respect to GAO, which put together a good report, that’s far too kind of an explanation that papers overs the actual problems.

The first problem is that we don’t actually spend enough money on apprenticeship. Congress last appropriated $285 million that has to be split at least 54 different ways. By the time that money hits the ground, it amounts to $Paltry compared to the actual needs states have to get more people into apprenticeship.

The second problem is that Congress also hardwired the most plentiful pots of money in WIOA—dollars passed directly to states every year by formula—to route workers toward lower-paying jobs to process them as cheaply and quickly as possible. Registered Apprenticeship programs are meant to help workers learn and grow on the job over time, so of course it’s not going to move someone toward the door with the speed and thriftiness Congress molded into the statute.

The third is that WIOA formula dollars can overwhelm workers, employers, and states with too much choice, which can guide all three away from Registered Apprenticeship. To comply with the laws for formula money, states have to make an abundance of decisions on setup that still have to fit within strict guidelines. Those plentiful pots of formula money also direct the creation and payout of vouchers to cover the cost off sometimes wildly unwieldy lists of workforce programs. A Harvard analysis found that not much gets paid out, and programs don’t get that much from WIOA. But it’s also bizarre as a general matter to bury workers, some of whom are recently laid off, in an abundance of choices with very little information and expect it to work out. That effectively is what Congress did.

Now add those problems to the other complications coming out of how we do apprenticeship in the United States. We don’t have an actual apprenticeship system but a little bit of infrastructure glued atop a consumer protection device, with the Department of Labor deputizing half the states to register programs for it and in the other half letting an underfunded and understaffed subagency take lead.

The slow speed and unintuitive setup of registration has been the source of frequent complaints from employers over Registered Apprenticeship. Yet, over the past year, I increasingly have heard employers complain about apprenticeship in general, feeling that they have been oversold a rigid and overcomplicated form of workforce management that underdelivers on their needs. (I don’t agree with this in general, but I think some weariness is understandable after a couple of decades of hearing that they need to start programs.)

Luckily, the second Trump Administration has made a commitment to Registered Apprenticeship, despite a failed attempt to reinvent the wheel and “privatize” already privatized apprenticeship programs in term one. That wasted four years splitting time and money that could have opened new doors to apprenticeship, and Trump II appears to have an awfully dim view of this work done by Trump I.

Unluckily, every month of term two has come with actions that made some of the apprenticeship’s problems worse—and its proposals for the future of workforce would make them much worse.

Really, there’s been something every month.

In January, the Administration instituted funding freezes for projects throughout the federal government, threatening money that opened doors to Registered Apprenticeship. In the time since then, it has slashed funding for Biden infrastructure projects that supported and incentivized Registered Apprenticeship Programs. Even if you want to chalk that up to rolling back a “climate hoax,” $46 billion of Biden resources went toward apprenticeship, many in traditional trades and manufacturing roles that the Administration wants to fill now. That seems ill advised.

In what appears to be February,¹ the Administration started stopping work on contracts or cutting funding for evaluation of Registered Apprenticeship because of concerns with “DEIA.” In doing so, it cut from one of the more dependable sources of hard evidence about apprenticeship’s benefits.² This research could have produced more evidence to win over skeptical employers. Because of what we can reasonably presume are unreasonable worries about “woke,” Trump II also quietly eliminated DOL pre-apprenticeship guidance that was the keystone for setting up key feeders for the apprenticeship programs it wants to expand.

In March, the Administration made changes to a DOL grant program that routed money away from giving apprentices good jobs toward one of the things employers hate the most about apprenticeship. It told states it could spend those limited congressional appropriations on earning DOL’s deputization, which shouldn’t be so costly as to take money from apprentices, and signaled that states would take the lead in the future of apprenticeship. A 50-plus-state system with varying policies and entry points generally isn’t what employers want, particularly the larger ones the Administration likes to court.

In April, the Administration committed to protecting and expanding Registered Apprenticeship and bringing America’s numbers up to 1 million active apprentices per year, but it never actually committed to 1 million registered apprentices and noticeably didn’t mention registered apprentices in a skinny budget proposal. Subsequent budget documents also noticeably flip from discussing Registered Apprenticeship to describing a commitment to expanding the number of just “apprentices.”³

That is concerning given that registration actually signifies quality and commitment to a training workers in safe environments. It also directed the Labor Secretary to use the scant resources Congress provides for apprenticeship to create a new non-registered form of Registered Apprenticeship for AI.⁴

In May, the Administration took steps and offered proposals that will make its goals for apprenticeship much, much harder to reach. It effectively killed the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations program, an underfunded program that still connected women to apprenticeships and good jobs. It then also proposed killing all of the existing workforce development programs at DOL and replacing them with a block grant.

Many of the existing programs support pre-apprenticeship programs⁵ that feed into Registered Apprenticeship programs and produce apprentices, meaning there is a decent chance that the Trump Administration could be pushing itself further away from 1 million active apprentices. Oh, and sending folks 50-plus directions to get financial help with apprenticeship? Not exactly what employers are looking for, either.

The block grant proposal commits to carving out 10 percent of each state’s grant for Registered Apprenticeship, which does raise dedicated Registered Apprenticeship funding by $11 million from current appropriations. Yet, split 50-plus ways, the carveout only raises state-by-side federal funding from $Paltry to $Paltry.99. I’m not going to underestimate what some states can get out of those 99 cents, but the slightest of math shows that the carveout is not the historic and meaningful investment in Registered Apprenticeship the Administration claims.

I don’t know what’s happening in June, but if I was invested in apprenticeship, I wouldn’t get my hopes up…

What should we do about it?

You may have noticed this isn't terribly nuanced time in Washington. Political leaders want big swings and cutting things to the marrow, and if you could say something about efficiency, that would be great too. In light of those parameters, it's hard to build a workforce strategy that meaningfully addresses stakeholder needs with money, gets people to decent jobs, and still seems like something that will make the President fist pump.⁶

Well, here is an idea: if we’re set on doing less and getting more, why doesn’t the federal government commit to Registered Apprenticeship as its default method of workforce training? Basically, an approach that says if you’re getting federal funding for workforce development, that funding and support has to go toward Registered Apprenticeship. We know Congress and the Administration are down with apprenticeship, so why not be all the way down?

It’s a big change and a hell of a primary-color solution for a set of nuanced problems. But it matches this administration’s style, and it would feed its appetite for huge cuts while putting real resources—nearly $3 billion—toward one national workforce strategy—efficiency!—that we know builds up the trades the Administration wants to serve and tends to create good jobs.

It also would help workers and employers know what they’re getting—apprenticeship—even if the money and infrastructure is split more than 50 ways. And it would remove the wiring in WIOA that trends toward low-paying jobs. There wouldn’t be urgency to offload someone to low-wage work because you’re supposed to offer Registered Apprenticeship. (Well, in theory.)

Now here is the part where I tell you my idea, which I just introduced, is kind of a bad one for a multitude of reasons I clearly see:

This is kind of a bad idea. We do need to do more resources and commitment to expand apprenticeship in the United States, but we also need diversity in how we train people to fill more immediate needs in good jobs, especially given the expected technological shifts of the next decade.

To take a frustrating example that was shared with me in my last policy job: there was an emerging occupation that was 90 percent the same as an existing job for which there were plenty of journeyworkers—or masters of apprenticeship occupations, for the sake of an easy way of thinking about it for the uninitiated. Those workers could do the job with a short training course. Employers in this field insisted that they only start new apprenticeship programs and anyone who entered the field start from scratch instead building upon existing skills.

That is the type of… overcomplicated thinking is the foundation of hiring problems excused by the mythical “skills gap.” Given the purported bounties of skilled professionals we think we’re about cut loose from jobs because of AI, it’s vital to have more short fill-in trainings that quickly give people with real skills the little bit of knowledge and experience they need to get back into good jobs.

Accordingly, if I were a federal policymaker tasked to do the above “We only sell apprenticeship at the federal workforce store” idea, I would raise the block grants’ minimum spending threshold for Registered Apprenticeship from 10 percent to 60 percent and note that pre-apprenticeship (which can be shorter and lead to jobs without going through apprenticeship programs!) is an OK expense.⁷ Twenty percent of the block-grant money I would set aside for training programs that help workers get into real jobs in fewer than six months. (I would give states a 20 percent cushion for administrative costs and put whatever is left into programs.) I am not a federal policymaker these days, however.

I also think we’re at the point that if apprenticeship really is going to pop off, it needs to pop off soon. Apprenticeship won’t go anywhere—there is too much private money and advocacy infrastructure in the game now, not to mention there also is organized labor, which for more than a century has been the best at training workers for skilled jobs this administration is interested in expanding, full stop.

Yet, I don’t think we can count on the type of introspection that leads Congress to gather that it really hasn’t put all that much into apprenticeship. Remember that lawmakers were very much behind “college for all” not too long go, and now they are eager to say not everyone needs to go to college.⁸ When does the turn happen with apprenticeship?

Building at least most of the boat out of the apprenticeship, then, may be the best option if we’re dead set on slashing resources and gutting programs that produce apprentices while also aspiring to… produce more apprentices.

Card subject to change.

Apprenticeship is by far the most frustrating thing to write about here because I always have to leave a bunch of stuff on the table, which is to say if there is something you’re looking for not reflected or undercovered here, I’ll be working it in another piece or three about apprenticeship in the future.

Meanwhile, greetings from New Orleans, where I’m in town for Jobs for the Future’s Horizons conference. If you’re around, give me a shout. I really will be wearing a T-shirt that says it is stackable and portable. Because if you’re going to make a credentialing joke anywhere, it’s going to be Horizons.

FRIDAY: To continue to offer rosy outlooks of current funding, I paint what I see as the worst-case scenario for block grants, and one I think that is not too far off from reality.

NEXT TUESDAY: How do we keep good jobs work going in the face of everything going on? Don’t start over.

1. Because some of these cuts happened in the high days of DOGE “Project: Ctrl+F” searching documents for no-no words and then quietly eliminating materials and money, it’s hard to actually pinpoint when some of these cuts actually happened, but February-ish seems safe.

2. The DOGE website is a mess and makes it hard to track what was cut and when—even for one of the beautiful robot brains I use to help me research and verify what I put in these newsletters. The only thing that turned up was a teaching apprenticeship cut in North Carolina, which doesn’t quite match what I’m talking about here. But I know of enough about these particular cuts that I felt confident saying as such here. That said, happy to correct or amend anything in this space. Email nick@jobsthat.work.

3. This might seem like a ticky-tack point, but this sort of flip-flopping between little-a apprenticeship and Registered Apprenticeship was how Trump I avoided committing to Registered Apprenticeship in the build of its alternative route of apprenticeship. It’s worth pointing out that it hasn’t just said “1 million registered apprentices.”

Just to make sure I’m being fair, I quickly ran last week’s hearing through a large-language model to let the robots be an impartial listener, and it concluded that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer did not use the phrase “Registered Apprentices” in regard to the the 1 million apprentices commitment, but that she did talk an awful lot about Registered Apprenticeship around it. She also implicitly declined a Republican member’s request to water down Registered Apprenticeship. Under Trump II, DOL has done a great job of continuing to publish national apprenticeship frameworks for certain occupations.

Yet, until I read a White House document committing to “1 million registered apprentices,” I don’t feel comfortable ignoring that noticeable switch between terms in the budget documents. Let me clear, too: I would love for the Administration to prove me wrong on this point and commit to 1 million registered apprentices.

4. Two things:

1. No one I have talked to seems to know what the hell this is talking about, still. It makes even less sense now that the Administration has proposed eliminating most of the money mentioned explicitly in the AI Executive Order.

2. Because this activity is not spending money on Registered Apprenticeship, which requires registration, there is is decent chance this would be illegal and a repeat of a term one controversy if it used Registered Apprenticeship appropriations.

5. An open question here is whether the Trump Administration actually supports pre-apprenticeship. It hasn’t replaced the pre-apprenticeship guidance, near as I can tell.

6. It’s worth noting that Registered Apprenticeship isn’t a favorite of the Heritage Foundation and conservative thinktank set that usually charts this Administration’s policy, including the likely incoming Solicitor of Labor, who in Project 2025 called for another four-year journey into the heart of Industry-Recognized Apprenticeships, the “private” alternative to Registered Apprenticeship of which he was an architect. Another not-fan is Rep. Virginia Foxx, the powerful former chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, who proudly noted at last week’s hearing that many of her former committee staff have migrated across the Hill to DOL as political appointees.

They are not the President, however.

7. Two additional notes:

1. An apprenticeship-only approach would be a good way of backstopping the good jobs problems in the model of workforce Pell put forward in the Abnormally Tall William, Who Sometimes Goes by “Bill,” Is a Joy to Behold Act currently before the Senate.

2. I would prefer there be actual jobs guaranteed at the end of these programs, but that probably is a bridge too far for the current Congress and administration. As many workforce professionals will tell you, trainees and students are more likely to complete programs when they know there is an actual job at the end of it. Which, you know, makes all the sense in the world and probably should be a core feature of how we spend this money anyway.

8. Which is kind of a good argument against one-size-fits-all policy solutions like “Just press the apprenticeship button” or… block grants for workforce.