Apprenticeships offer an answer to many of the most pressing questions facing the U.S. economy by enabling people to earn while they learn and also helping employers fill immediate talent gaps.
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In today’s fast-changing and volatile labor market, one of the oldest forms of education is back in fashion. Apprenticeships offer an answer to many of the most pressing questions facing the U.S. economy by enabling people to earn while they learn while also helping employers fill immediate talent gaps. It’s no wonder, then, that apprenticeship seems to be one of the few areas of bipartisan consensus, with 88% of Democrats and 82% of Republicans supporting the expansion of apprenticeship programs.
And there’s plenty of research to back up the model, too. Data from the Registered Apprenticeship system shows that program completers earn an average annual salary of $84,000 — well above the national average of $66,000 — and lifetime earnings $300,000 greater than their non-apprentice counterparts. For businesses, every $100 invested in apprenticeship returns an average of $144 through increased productivity, reduced costs, and frontline innovation.
If everyone’s talking about its game-changing potential, why is apprenticeship so dramatically underused? Only about 700,000 Americans are currently enrolled in a Registered Apprenticeship program — a minuscule fraction of the 160 million Americans in the workforce.
Recognizing the untapped value apprenticeships can bring to the U.S. economy, President Trump last year announced a goal of expanding the program to reach 1 million active registered apprentices. We’re not yet on track to meet that goal, but National Apprenticeship Week this week offers a chance to recommit.
On paper, getting from 700,000 to 1 million should also be eminently achievable. Five million people graduate from U.S. high schools every year. Another 7 million are unemployed and actively seeking work. Millions more have dropped out of the labor force entirely. Apprenticeship should be a path for far more of them than it is today. But while we have both the need and the potential participants, what's currently missing is a driving force from awareness to interest to adoption among both employers and would-be apprentices — and the aligned public and private investment to build it.
While apprenticeship has a legacy within the skilled trades (particularly construction), over the past several years, non-traditional apprenticeships have grown faster than those in legacy industries. This is a positive sign, but just a starting point. We need to expand both the range of industries that rely on apprenticeship and the extent to which they use it.
A few industries have shown rapid adoption: 45 states and Washington, DC have adopted teacher apprenticeships over the past four years in response to teacher shortages. Health care has been another early mover, seeing a 43% increase in apprentices over the past five years. AI, cybersecurity, and clean energy have grown rapidly but from a tiny base. The model can and must reach a far broader range of occupations—and quickly, given the stakes.
But while new industries can further widen their use of apprenticeship, legacy industries can also deepen their reliance on it. Manufacturing–the beating heart of the Administration's reshoring agenda–currently accounts for only about 30,000 active apprentices, significantly less than 1% of the manufacturing workforce. Construction, with 447,000 identified vacancies, can extend its utilization of apprenticeship to meet continued demand. Increasing the utilization of apprenticeship in these industries can also help reach the 1 million mark. Federal policy has a role to play, too. The Trump Administration’s pay-for-performance grants are one recent example of ways the federal government can incentivize companies to invest in the model.
In a survey of Gen Z awareness of postsecondary pathways, only 10% of students reported familiarity with apprenticeship, and only 17% of parents said the same.
Among the small minority familiar with apprenticeships, most likely view it as an alternative to college rather than a complement to it. That binary framing is outdated. An increasing number of degree apprenticeships and other earn-and-learn pathways that combine traditional postsecondary credentials with paid, on-the-job experience is breaking the either-or paradigm.
Apprenticeship should be recognized as a first-choice pathway for students with a wide range of aspirations — including those who are interested in a college degree. And at an economic moment where expectations for on-the-job experience seem to be growing among both college students and employers, apprenticeship could be a valuable part of a career-connected learning ecosystem.
Employer engagement is the engine of any successful apprenticeship expansion. But too often, bureaucratic friction has been the sand in the gears.
In 2023, one-third of employers reported that the registration process created barriers to starting new programs. Challenges grow for employers seeking to operate across state lines, as state-level registration processes create fragmentation and a patchwork of expectations.
Faster approval processes, cross-state reciprocity, and the aforementioned performance-based grants can begin to remove friction and create the necessary incentives for companies, industry associations, and intermediaries to scale. The federal government is taking steps to improve the process, calling on states to approve new programs more quickly. States themselves, meanwhile, are acting as seedbeds of innovation: South Carolina’s tax credit for employers who hire apprentices led to a tenfold increase in registered programs and an eightfold increase in apprentices — more than 53,000 to date.
Apprenticeship shouldn't sit at the edge of our workforce strategy — it belongs at the center. And over time, 1 million may just be the starting point. Projections from Apprenticeships for America suggest the American economy could support as many as 4 million apprentices.
When a modest public dollar unlocks outsized private investment and lasting gains for workers, we're not talking about just another program. We're talking about the public-private engine we can't afford to underfund. With the right reforms and a shared commitment to scale, it can easily power a million high-quality apprenticeships and beyond.
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