Untangling Trump II’s big apprenticeship competition.
The $145 million has a few more strings than workforce organizations might have hoped.
Hey
Because of news, this is (another) special paid Tuesday edition of JOBS THAT WORK. JTW’s weekly free newsletter will be back tomorrow, with an absolutely blast of an interview.
As I was building out my list of knots and cutbacks in the Trump Administration’s new $145 million funding opportunity to run apprenticeship incentive funds, a thought occurred to me: man, these apprenticeship competitions can’t help but be complicated.
“Complicated” is a common complaint about DOL’s funding opportunities for apprenticeship, and it is one that has spanned at least three administrations, including Trump I. It’s part of why some organizations were so hyped by Trump II’s embrace of pay-to-train incentives. You train somebody, you get the money. How hard can it be?
Thing is, there’s a reason apprenticeship money is lousy with hoops in search of a jumping-type person. The good news/bad news of apprenticeship is that both parties like the idea of it a lot, but not enough to fund it like they mean it, so they expect a lot from every dollar spent on it. There’s a longstanding extra layer of White House review here because apprenticeship continues to be an economic development imperative at the top of the American government. The extra scrutiny and political pressure tends to produce funding opportunities that have lots of components and requirements that tie themselves in knots.
Here we are again.
Below, I break down the big stuff in the $145 million opportunity published late Friday by the Department of Labor, which takes pay-to-train advocates on a conceptual loop-de-loop in some sections. I’m putting a pin in some finer political and policy points until later1 to focus today on piecing together the puzzle of what these incentive funds will look like. In the process, I break some news (at least to some of you) about another apprenticeship investment by the Department and identify the big issues on which the funding competition is likely to turn.