Three Strikes Against Apprenticeships

Introduction

Apprenticeships offer students an opportunity to gain on-the-job training and education, leading to a successful career. Instead of paying tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars—as required to obtain a college degree—apprentices are paid throughout their education and are often guaranteed a job upon successful completion of their apprenticeship. The combination of large workforce shortages in fields such as health care and technology and the rising costs of college make apprenticeships an abundantly underused opportunity to economize on a proven education model that benefits workers and employers alike.

Instead of expanding apprenticeships, the Biden Administration has taken at least three major actions that threaten the viability of existing apprenticeship programs and that virtually guarantee a reduction in the growth of apprenticeships. Those actions include:

1. Cancelling new and expanding apprenticeships developed under the Industry- Recognized Apprenticeship Programs (IRAPs);
2. Proposing a 180,000-plus-word rule that eliminates two of three types of apprenticeships under the Government-Registered Apprenticeship Programs (GRAPs), massively increasing costs and bureaucracy for remaining GRAP apprenticeships, and subjecting existing Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs to federal regulation; and
3. Issuing an executive order directing agencies to prioritize federal grants and contracts among employers that participate in GRAPs.

Each one of these actions will restrict, not expand, apprenticeship opportunities for Americans.

Benefits of Apprenticeship Programs

Apprenticeships provide a proven and successful alternative to college degrees. Through a combination of on-the-job and off-the-job education—during which apprentices are paid instead of being charged tuition—apprentices learn the skills they need for a career and are typically offered a job in their field upon successful completion of their apprenticeship. Yet, the apprenticeship model has failed to expand significantly outside the typically male- dominated trades, such as electrical work, plumbing, and carpentry.

A 2017 Harvard study estimated that the number of occupations commonly filled through apprenticeships could nearly triple (from 27 to 74), that the number of job openings filled through apprenticeships could expand eight-fold (to 3.2 million), and that the occupations ripe for apprenticeship expansion could offer 20 percent higher wages than traditional apprenticeship occupations.¹ Similarly, a Brookings report titled “Apprenticeships Are an Overlooked Solution for Creating More Access to Quality Jobs,” noted that “[a] robust apprenticeship system has the potential to increase earnings and reduce occupational segregation in the labor market.”²

So why has the number of apprenticeships not grown? In large part, apprenticeships’ failure to expand can be attributed to the excessively restrictive GRAP model that has dominated apprenticeship programs in the U.S. for more than 80 years. Those restrictions have largely kept GRAPs contained within a few legacy and male-dominated trades even as workforce needs have evolved and are now concentrated in industries such as health care and technology. A report by Isabel Soto at the American Action Forum notes that while the health care sector accounts for six of 10 of the most rapidly growing occupations, health care apprenticeships only make up 2.5 percent of GRAPs.³ Even in high-demand industries like construction, where GRAPs are common, excessive costs and regulations prevent greater growth. The construction sector currently faces a workforce shortage of more than 500,000 workers; meanwhile, construction GRAPs graduate only 40,000 to 45,000 construction workers per year.⁴

President Biden’s Three Strikes Against Apprenticeships

Apprenticeship programs and participants are among the victims of President Joe Biden’s whole of government approach to unionization. Instead of focusing on ways that unions can benefit workers, the Biden Administration’s method of increasing unionization is to squelch the competition and to tilt intentionally neutral laws in unions’ favor. For apprenticeships, that has meant closing doors to non-union apprenticeship programs, which are less likely to produce unionized workers.

The Biden Administration’s three major assaults on apprenticeships are:

1. Repealing the Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Program. Within one month of taking office, President Biden issued an executive order, and the Biden administration’s U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) later implemented a rule, to rescind newly formed IRAPs.⁵ The Trump Administration established the IRAP model to expand apprenticeship programs and better align them with industry needs. IRAPs enabled a more straightforward process for developing high-quality apprenticeship programs and built on greater employer involvement, with a goal of reaching more workers in high-demand industries.

The Biden Administration’s rationale for repealing the IRAP model was that these industry-run, as opposed to union-run, programs were competing with the traditional government model:

The Biden administration is concerned that the IRAP program creates a redundant apprenticeship program, with duplicate and often inferior systems⁶ that compete with the highly successful and longstanding Registered Apprenticeship Program.⁷

Among the now-cancelled IRAPs were more than 130 new programs (as well as 27 third- party Standards Recognition Entities to recognize and oversee them). Most of those programs were in nursing, which faces increasing workforce shortages that are weighing on America’s health care systems.⁸

2. Proposing a costly and restrictive apprenticeship rule that will almost certainly reduce the number of apprenticeship programs. In January 2024, the DOL proposed a more than 180,000-word rule that, among other things: cancels the two fastest- growing types of GRAPs; subjects existing CTE programs to federal regulation; supersedes state and local authority over apprenticeships; allows interest groups to bring down existing apprenticeship programs and block the formation of new ones; and imposes dozens of significant new barriers and burdens on GRAPs.

Among some of the many backwards provisions, the proposed rule:

• Requires all new and existing apprenticeships programs to prove to a newly created federal administrator that the occupation for which they provide training is “suitable” for the apprenticeship model. Being “suitable” includes proving that the occupation will lead to a “sustainable” career. “Sustainable,” as it applies to compensation is entirely subjective, and “sustainable” as it applies to the future of work is not something a federal administrator can accurately predict. Proving “suitability” also requires that a new apprenticeship program not include occupational training components that are similar to those of an existing program, as that could, “detract from the successful operation of established programs for very similar occupations.”⁹
• Eliminates competence-based and hybrid apprenticeship programs, which use either competence metrics or a combination of competence and minimum hours of training to graduate apprentices. Instead, all apprenticeship programs must include a minimum of 2,000 hours of on-the-job training and 144 hours of off-the-job education.Eliminating competence-based apprenticeship programs is like eliminating in-car driver’s tests and granting licenses based on completing a minimum number of hours in the car or in a driver’s education classroom. Eliminating hybrid apprenticeship programs is like requiring high schools and colleges to disavow tests and grades and base degrees exclusively on classroom attendance and assignment completion.Competence-based and hybrid programs have been the fastest-growing because they ensure competence without unnecessary costs. Between 2017 and 2022, competence- based apprenticeship programs increased by 197 percent and hybrid apprenticeships increased by 116 percent, while traditional, hours-based apprenticeships increased by only 11 percent. Inexplicably, the Administration’s proposed rule includes a projection that the programs it seeks to cancel will stay in business and expand by 145 percent over the next 10 years, accounting for six of 10 new apprenticeship programs.¹⁰

3. Issuing an executive order that uses taxpayer dollars to penalize non-GRAP employers. On March 6, 2024, President Biden issued an “Executive Order on Scaling and Expanding the Use of Registered Apprenticeships in Industries and the Federal Government and Promoting Labor-Management Forums.”¹¹ This executive order directs agencies to use contracts and grants to reward employers who participate in GRAPs and to coerce those who do not to become involved in them or risk being shut out from federal contracts. Consequently, employers who want to invest in education to build up their workforce through apprenticeships will be less likely to do so through non-government programs. Employers will be more likely to seek participation in GRAP programs, to the detriment of more effective, less costly, and arguably more accessible non-government education programs.

The Biden Administration’s Apprenticeship Actions Defy Economic Reality and Common Sense

Centuries of economic theory and practice confirm that competition increases the supply and reduces the price of a given commodity, and government regulations that add bureaucratic procedures, administrative burdens, or increase barriers to entry raise the cost and reduce the supply of a commodity.

The Administration’s actions directly reduce competition by:

• Cancelling existing and prohibiting future industry-led registered apprenticeships.
• Cancelling the two fastest-growing, competence-based and hybrid GRAP models.
• Directing federal bureaucrats to take over regulation of non-GRAP CTE programs.
• Allowing incumbent proprietors of apprenticeship programs to prevent new entrants.
• Imposing new “suitability” tests that will prevent the creation of new apprenticeship programs and suppress existing ones.
• Shutting out employers and workers who do not participate in GRAPs from participation in federal contracts.

The proposed rule increases costs and creates a more burdensome and less responsive system by:

• Imposing more than 180,000 words of regulation to implement a 400-word apprenticeship law.
• Including, indicative of its excessive new requirements, 83 instances of the word “burden[s],” 467 instances of “must,” and 892 instances of “requirement.”
• Superseding state and local apprenticeship authority with one-size-fits-all federal regulation.

To claim that these measures will make apprenticeships more navigable and cause them to expand is like claiming that a ball will roll faster uphill than downhill; it is illogical and not justified by economic reality.

How Congress Can Expand Alternative Education, Including Apprenticeships

America faces significant workforce shortages, particularly in high-growth industries that the traditional GRAP model has failed to serve. Moreover, the excessive cost of college education is making it harder for younger Americans to launch into adulthood and to form families. America needs more alternative and lower-cost education options.

Policymakers who want to help can:

• Enact a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval to cancel the proposed apprenticeship rule once it is finalized.
• Pass the Apprenticeship Freedom Act¹² or the Training America’s Workforce Act¹³ to revive industry-led apprenticeships as an alternative to the government-approved apprenticeship model.
• Amend the National Apprenticeship Act to specify that the DOL’s promulgation of it must encourage and not stifle effective apprenticeship programs.

Workers need more effective and lower-cost or no-cost education options, and America needs a workforce that meets the evolving needs of its economy. Apprenticeships offer a helpful solution, but recent rent-seeking policies will stifle their existence.

Apprenticeship programs must be free to innovate and expand.