As part of his promise to restore American manufacturing and the fortunes of the working class, President Donald Trump pledged to expand trade apprenticeships. In an April executive order, Trump directed the Department of Labor to deliver within 120 days a plan “to reach and surpass 1 million new active apprentices.”  

That deadline has passed, with no evidence of progress or even a plan to reach the one-million apprenticeship milestone.   

Instead, drastic layoffs, funding cuts, and a purge of “DEI”-related initiatives have sabotaged the emerging apprenticeship movement. Growth in apprenticeships is at its slowest in years, far more sluggish than during Joe Biden’s administration or even the president’s first term. At its current pace, former DOL senior staffer Nick Beadle told me, “I don’t see them getting to 1 million apprentices till 2032.”  

During Biden’s tenure, the government invested nearly $730 million to expand registered apprenticeships. But it was from 2016 to 2020, the last year of Obama’s administration and of Trump’s first term, that apprenticeships posted double-digit percentage increases each year, according to government data. By the end of Biden’s term, in fiscal 2024, there were more than 670,000 active apprentices—or nearly double the roughly 359,000 apprentices in fiscal 2015.  

But this year, the number of new apprentices has grown by only about 3 percent so far, according to Zach Boren, Senior Vice President of Apprenticeships for America and the former chief of registered apprenticeship and policy for the Department of Labor. “We’ve got a White House that has really good talking points on apprenticeship, but no road map,” Boren said.  

One major problem: the gutting of the DOL’s Office of Apprenticeships, first by Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative, and then by the exodus of key staff. There’s literally no one available to write a plan, let alone implement it.  

The office lost its national director and several division chiefs, and staffing levels are down by as much as 30 percent, Boren estimates. The website for the national office lists just three people, all of them designated as “acting.” “The Department of Labor, and especially the Office of Apprenticeship, are running on fumes,” said Boren. 

The Trump administration has also paused or canceled grants for apprenticeship programs and apprenticeship research, which means fewer resources for recruiting and preparing apprenticeship candidates, helping employers and community colleges launch apprenticeship programs, or evaluating their effectiveness.  

Beadle, an investigative journalist before his stint at the agency, told me that at least $30 million in funding appropriated by Congress last year was never spent and has expired. “I have not seen records that confirm they spent all of the $285 billion [allocated] last year on registered apprenticeship,” said Beadle, who writes about workforce development for the Substack “Jobs That Work.”  

In addition, millions of dollars in previously awarded contracts to nonprofits, researchers, and industry intermediaries have been canceled. Among the recipients whose grant was nixed is Reach University, a nonprofit institution that’s pioneering debt-free “apprenticeship degrees.” According to journalist Paul Fain, writing for Work Shift, DOL rescinded $14.7 million in grants to Reach University’s teachers college, including a nearly $10 million grant to one of the institution’s community partners in Louisiana, and another grant to a partner in Arkansas. Through a spokeswoman, Reach University President Joe E. Ross confirmed that as of this writing, the grants had not been reinstated. (Ross also said that “although the grant terminations caused a temporary financial impact, we were able to ensure there was no disruption to any current learner’s degree experience.”) 

Other organizations that didn’t receive anticipated funding include the Interstate Renewal Energy Council, which helps facilitate clean energy industry apprenticeships, and the Healthcare Career Advancement Program (H-CAP), which develops apprenticeships in health care, said Apprenticeships for America’s Boren. The administration has also ended research grants related to apprenticeships, according to Work Shift’s Fain, including a project to provide technical assistance to states expanding apprenticeships and evaluations of youth apprenticeship programs. The Office of Apprenticeship’s grants pages currently indicate “no funding opportunities” and “no active awards.” 

Given the vital role intermediaries play in creating apprenticeship opportunities, the lack of funding for these groups has effectively severed the pipeline. Boren reports “massive layoffs across the apprenticeship field,” with some organizations even shutting their doors. Boren also regrets the lost momentum among businesses. “We’ve had industry groups that have really gotten excited about apprenticeships, and there’ve been some big investments over the last 10 years,” he said. “Now my question is, how many folks like that are no longer interested?” 

Trump’s campaign against “DEI,” however, may prove the most destructive to his stated goal of expanding apprenticeship. While women and minorities are among those most likely to benefit from apprenticeships and to be interested in pursuing them, the Trump administration is committed to shutting them out. As a result, “one million apprentices” will be unattainable if half the workforce is discouraged from participation.  

Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical and Wasteful DEI Programs,” signed on his first day in office, has led to the wholesale purge of websites, data, and programs perceived to promote diversity. The Office of Apprenticeship saw the removal of guidance on affirmative action (“access denied,” the site now reads), regulations on equal opportunity hiring (“page under construction,” as shown by an error message), and even the 2024 report on National Apprenticeship Week, which reportedly included descriptions of recruitment efforts for women and minorities (“page not found”).  

The administration also canceled dozens of grants under the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) program established in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush, according to a letter sent to DOL by Democratic Reps. Bobby Scott and Rosa DeLauro in May. DOL has since reposted the grants, but the organizations whose awards were terminated are ineligible for this money, reports Mother Jones, and the program no longer prioritizes historically underrepresented groups such as women of color or women with disabilities.  

These actions could undo the progress made over the last decade toward making apprenticeships more accessible. While women have historically made up a fraction of apprentices, their ranks had been growing. Between 2014 and 2023, the share of women apprentices rose five percentage points, from 9.2 percent to 14.4 percent, according to a 2024 report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and the number of female apprentices tripled. Today, women in apprenticeships currently number fewer than 100,000, according to DOL’s latest data, and the number of Black Americans in apprenticeships is lower still—at under 90,000.   

Much as he did on his show, Trump seems to favor a particular kind of apprentice. A recent social media campaign by the Department of Labor featured what’s presumably Trump’s ideal: a blond, broad-shouldered, AI-generated Aryan avatar ripped straight from the manosphere, with a chiseled jaw and a cleft chin. Historians told the Washington Post that the style of these posts evoked “historical government propaganda, including posters from New Deal-era America and fascist Europe.”  

Ultimately, “propaganda” might be all that Trump’s apprenticeship initiatives turn out to be. Like so many of his promises to his working-class base, “one million apprenticeships” will likely prove hollow.  

The post Trump’s Broken Promise of “One Million Apprentices”  appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Apprenticeship in the United States is enjoying another moment in the spotlight—hopefully one that will last.

Most Americans appreciate that apprentices learn by doing, are productive workers who earn wages, and develop the skills for rewarding careers. Apprenticeships yield higher returns than other training programs, without requiring participants to forego wages while training. One survey found that American parents would prefer the option of a three-year apprenticeship leading to a career over a full scholarship to a college.

President Donald Trump has also supported apprenticeships. His April 23 executive order on skills called for a plan to support over one million registered apprenticeships yearly. Additionally, he made apprenticeships a key part of his new “talent strategy” plan, which the Departments of Commerce, Education, and Labor jointly released.

Trump’s goal is ambitious. Currently, there are 561,000 civilian and 117,000 military apprenticeships—far below the one million per year he envisions. Apprenticeships are also much scarcer in the U.S. than in most countries. For example, apprentices as a share of the labor force in France and the United Kingdom are 8 to 10 times higher than the 0.33 percent share in the U.S. Trump’s ability to scale the level of U.S. apprenticeships will depend on adequate resources, a smart implementation plan, and avoiding some of the obstacles that have stymied past presidents who have championed apprenticeships. 

Stops and starts on apprenticeships

Apprenticeships first gained bipartisan interest in the late 1980s and early 1990s, spurred by the widening earnings gap between college and high school graduates and increased awareness of successful Swiss and German systems. President George H.W. Bush proposed the Youth Apprenticeship Act of 1992, and President Bill Clinton persuaded Congress to pass the School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) of 1994. Unfortunately, STWOA minimized the importance of apprenticeship and mainly supported weak interventions like job shadowing and career exploration. Construction apprenticeships, primarily funded by unions and employers since the 1930s, continued under federal regulations, but apprenticeships were rare in other industries. And the apprenticeship system was also a backwater, even within the Labor Department. The STWOA law’s weak results had few defenders, and it sunset in 2001. 

It took another 15 years for apprenticeships to reappear on the political and policy agenda. President Barack Obama supported the American Apprenticeship Initiative (AAI) late in his term, a $175 million pilot project providing grants of $1 to $3 million over five years to 45 organizations to boost apprenticeships, especially outside the construction sector. Congress started increasing funding for the apprenticeship system from the modest $30 million that the Labor Department’s Office of Apprenticeship (OA) previously allocated to oversee existing programs. The first Donald Trump administration endorsed higher funding and encouraged large companies to develop more apprenticeships. However, instead of creating an expansion plan, the administration and Congress became enmeshed in a controversy over Industry Recognized Apprenticeship Programs (IRAPs), an alternative to the traditional “registered” apprenticeship system, largely dominated by construction unions.

One goal of IRAPs was to bypass the often opaque and time-consuming process of officially “registering” a program with the government, instead giving employers the flexibility to design an apprenticeship program that industry bodies, not government offices, would recognize. Critics argued that this industry self-regulation could limit government oversight and compromise quality. Over the past four years, President Joe Biden ended the IRAP initiative, even as Congress increased appropriations to $285 million for registered programs. 

How to “make apprenticeships great in America”

As Trump begins his efforts, resources for expanding apprenticeships are hardly sufficient. The only aid provided by the recently enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act is the improved ability of apprenticeship programs to use Pell grants. If Trump is serious about his goal of one million apprenticeships a year, here are five actions the administration and Congress should take:

1. Encourage employer participation with a “pay-per-apprentice” fund. The main challenge is motivating employers to offer apprenticeships. Many employers have little knowledge of the workings of apprenticeships and how they can improve their recruitment, training, and productivity. But once employers start programs, they generally find them worthwhile. A recent study found high returns on apprenticeship investments. Still, convincing employers to adopt apprenticeships enough to change their policies is difficult. Doing so usually requires intermediaries (say, industry associations, local nonprofits, colleges, unions, staffing, and training firms) that can persuade employers to launch apprenticeships and help them organize and register their programs. Paying these groups for the apprenticeships they help create makes sense. The experience of American grantees funded under Obama’s American Apprenticeship Initiative indicates that each apprentice hire costs the federal government about $5,000 to kickstart. This means that with $5 billion, the fund could create about 1 million new apprentices.
2. Make employer participation easier with ready-made occupational frameworks for structuring apprenticeships. Employers interested in creating apprenticeships in welding, accounting, or information technology should be able to draw on best practices for what the apprentice is expected to learn and how much of that education will occur at the worksite or in class (online or in person). A public-private entity or set of entities could work with employees, trade associations, and education and training organizations to oversee the development of these skills frameworks and ensure they are updated regularly. Once approved, employers agreeing to hire and train apprentices using these frameworks could be fast-tracked for registration under the registered apprenticeship system and qualify for public funding. Using this low-cost initiative, the employer could register the apprentice easily online.
3. Fund classroom learning opportunities for apprentices. Apprenticeships typically combine on-the-job learning with instruction off the job, such as classroom learning. The government could finance most of this off-the-job instruction, lowering the cost of apprenticeship programs for employers and students, and increasing early access to these programs. One way to do this is to allow employers and apprentices to reap already allocated state and federal funds, such as Pell grants, veterans’ benefits, and other sources. This would require expanding eligibility for these programs. Access to short-term Pell grants in the reconciliation bill can assist, but tweaking college Pell grants could boost apprenticeships by lowering employer costs for off-job training. Another option is to fund “dual-credit” courses for high school students interested in apprenticeships. State and local governments already support high school and dual-credit courses, providing the academic component of apprenticeships at little or no cost to employers or other government programs. Starting apprenticeships in late high school can increase young people’s engagement in learning. This is one reason countries like Germany and Switzerland engage 50 to 70 percent of their 16-19-year-olds in apprenticeships. Since the average age of U.S. apprentices is 28 or older, beginning in high school would be a significant shift that could benefit young adults.
4. Streamline the apprenticeship registration process and strengthen assessments. Too often, starting an official federally “registered” apprenticeship program takes too long to approve, which is one reason employers can be reluctant to participate. Fast-tracking approval for programs using well-designed occupational frameworks could ease the bottleneck. If a proposed program matches the requirements in this standardized framework, it should win quick approval. In addition, federal and state apprenticeship offices should continue to monitor program quality with assessments every few years (rather than placing barriers in the approval process and then allowing programs to run on autopilot). Oversight systems operating in Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries offer useful models for how this can be done. For example, England’s Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) ensures that apprenticeship programs follow occupational standards and show adequate completion rates.
5. Create apprenticeships in federal, state, and local governments. Expanding apprenticeships in the public sector for information technology, accounting, health care, and security (including police and fire departments) would reduce vacancies, enhance productivity, and demonstrate credibility when promoting apprenticeships to the private sector. Since HR managers in the public sector often lack experience with apprenticeships, the government will, in most cases, require help from apprenticeship intermediaries or staff in state apprenticeship offices to set up programs.

Building a robust apprenticeship system will take years. However, the experience of advanced economies demonstrates that it is worthwhile: success will enhance worker earnings, economic mobility, and national productivity and inspire a strong sense of identity and pride among apprenticeship graduates.

The post Has the Apprenticeship Moment Finally Arrived? appeared first on Washington Monthly.