2024 has been a great year for registered apprenticeships at the Federal level.
Here are some stories from earlier this year:
- Whitehouse Issues Apprenticeship Executive Order on Apprenticeships
- Department of Labor Launches Youth Employment Works
- Spotlight on National Youth Apprenticeship Week
- DoL to Modernize Apprenticeship Regulation
With the change in the Democratic party’s presidential candidate and all the surrounding news, this story may not have gotten picked on your radar, but it’s great news.
$244M Announced to Expand the Federal Government’s Registered Apprenticeship Program
The AP’s Josh Boak covered the announcement and here are some highlights:
- Purpose is to bring more people into higher-paying jobs that don’t require a college degree
- This is the highest funding sum in the program’s history
- The funding will be distributed to 52 grantees
- The funding will be distributed within 32 states
GoSprout’s Take
With so much coverage about the presidential race, especially since the Democratic nominee switched, it’s a shame that all the good work to promote the benefits of apprenticeship isn’t getting as much coverage as it deserves…but this is great news.
Just since GoSprout’s founding, we’ve seen support growing and so many employers within our community successfully receive grant money for their new or existing programs.
So hopefully the coverage continues and will get more visibility once the election cycle concludes.
Zoom Out
Boak’s article carries a great statistic about how the ecosystem is growing:
“The latest Labor Department figures show there are 641,044 registered apprenticeships, an increase from the Trump administration when apprenticeships peaked in 2020 at 569,311.”*
*These numbers are apprentices in apprenticeship programs, not the count of individual tracks or companies with programs.
How Can We Do More?
We love to see the press cover apprenticeships and specifically the economic benefits. Historically, companies that don’t have registered apprenticeships at all or don’t have as many apprenticeship tracks as they would like cite the administrative and coordination challenges, ultimately leading to high cost, as the primary reasons for not taking advantage.
But with clarity coming from the Department of Labor, states getting in on the act, apprenticeship sponsors willing to lend support to employers, and tools like our apprenticeship management software, those cost and compliance concerns should be a thing of the past.
As an example, we helped Georgia’s Radiance Solar learn how to launch a registered apprenticeship compliantly, create three apprenticeship tracks (with more on the way), and pass their first DoL site visit with flying colors…and all of that was over a period of roughly 120 days earlier this year.
So let’s all work together to spread two messages:
- There are tons of benefits of registered apprenticeships for all stakeholders and that list is growing.
- The historical reasons not to launch are just that…history. Apprenticeships can now be created and run profitably even by small companies.
Do you have a story to tell? Reach out to us. Our community is growing and we love to spread the good word about stakeholders growing the apprenticeship ecosystem.
