Apprenticeship Gains Attention as Employers Confront Skills Shortages

Registered apprenticeships are drawing renewed bipartisan attention as employers grapple with persistent labor shortages, rapid technological change, and mounting pressure to develop new skills.

During a recent congressional hearing before the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, lawmakers and workforce experts agreed that apprenticeship programs represent one of the nation’s most effective talent development strategies — even as they disagreed over how the federal government should support their expansion.

For HR leaders facing ongoing recruiting challenges, the hearing underscored a broader shift taking place in workforce development. Apprenticeships are no longer viewed primarily as a solution for the skilled trades. Increasingly, they are being positioned as a scalable strategy for building talent pipelines across industries ranging from healthcare and manufacturing to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

Committee Chairman Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, framed apprenticeships as an essential response to a rapidly evolving labor market where continuous learning has become a business necessity.

“Across the country, millions of Americans are looking for pathways into long-lasting careers and employers are searching for workers with the key skills and the ability to adapt,” Owens said. “Workers increasingly need opportunities to build new skills throughout their careers.”

He argued that the traditional expectation of earning a four-year degree before entering the workforce no longer reflects today’s economic realities.

Instead, he pointed to apprenticeship programs that allow workers to earn while they learn, gain practical experience, and develop skills employers actually need. While apprenticeships have historically been concentrated in construction and manufacturing, Owens noted that today’s models increasingly include emerging industries. The urgency, he suggested, is only increasing as organizations rethink workforce planning, reskilling, and internal mobility strategies in response to AI-driven job transformation.

Advocacy: Workforce Development

Despite partisan disagreement over workforce funding and labor policy, both Republicans and Democrats emphasized that registered apprenticeships consistently produce positive outcomes for workers and employers alike.

Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., described registered apprenticeships as “one of the best models of job training that we have” because participants “earn money while learning in-demand skills and receive nationally recognized credentials that lead to rewarding careers.”

She emphasized that the benefits extend beyond individual workers. “They also provide employers with a pipeline of talented employees,” Adams said.

She also stressed that the federal registered apprenticeship system’s quality standards distinguish it from less structured workforce programs. “Registered apprenticeships are the gold standard of workforce training because of their high-quality program standards,” Adams said. “These quality standards not only ensure that apprentices build valuable skills while earning a salary and benefits, but also that they receive a credential that is valued in the labor market and recognized by employers across the country.”

Without those standards, she warned, “workers can become vulnerable to predatory, ineffective programs.”

While Adams praised the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) apprenticeship programs, she criticized what she characterized as insufficient federal investment and staffing reductions that could hamper future expansion. She said that achieving President Doanld Trump’s national apprenticeship goals will require significantly greater funding and stronger support.

Apprenticeship Growth Expanded, But Is Losing Momentum

One of the hearing’s most detailed assessments came from John Ladd, former longtime administrator of the DOL Office of Apprenticeship, under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

According to Ladd, apprenticeship has evolved from a niche workforce strategy into one of the country’s largest federally supported training systems.

“Registered apprenticeship now produces more than 300,000 new apprentices annually,” he testified, noting that the number of active apprentices has “essentially doubled from roughly 350,000 in 2014 to 700,000 today.”

The return on investment is equally compelling. Workers completing apprenticeship programs earn average annual salaries of approximately $80,000 while realizing lifetime earnings gains approaching $300,000, according to Ladd. Employers, meanwhile, receive an estimated return of $1.44 for every dollar invested in apprenticeship programs.

“For employers, it creates reliable talent pipelines, improves retention, and helps ensure that training is directly tied to business need,” he said.

Yet Ladd cautioned that recent growth has slowed considerably, citing research concluding that apprentice participation has plateaued and that the country will fall short of the Trump administration’s goal of one million active apprentices by the end of the decade without deliberate intervention.

Rather than relying on incremental changes, Ladd urged Congress to modernize the nation’s apprenticeship framework through reauthorization of the National Apprenticeship Act, stronger employer incentives, improved workforce data, and a long-term bipartisan strategy designed to endure across administrations.

He also advocated creating a more seamless apprenticeship ecosystem linking pre-apprenticeships, youth apprenticeships, registered apprenticeships, and degree apprenticeships into what he described as “a connected pathway system, with no dead ends for learners and workers.”

Toolkit: Workforce Planning

Apprenticeships Must Scale to Meet Workforce Demand

While lawmakers debated funding and policy, employers and apprenticeship providers offered a practical perspective: workforce shortages have reached a point where expanding apprenticeship programs is becoming a business imperative.

Jaime Angell, senior director of apprenticeships and transitional programs at Caliber Collision based in Lewisville, Texas, described how the company’s Technician Apprentice Program has become a cornerstone of its workforce strategy amid a severe shortage of skilled auto body technicians.

In collision repair alone, she noted, the industry will need more than 73,000 new technicians over the next five years but is projected to fill fewer than 32,000 positions.

Caliber responded by creating a competency-based apprenticeship model that moves employees forward based on demonstrated skills rather than classroom seat time, she said. Most complete the program within 12 to 18 months, depending on their pace.

Since the company’s first apprentice graduated in 2023, “over 3,000 apprentices have graduated and at any given time between 800 and 1,800 are enrolled and training across the country,” Angell said.

Unlike traditional training programs, apprentices begin working immediately alongside experienced technicians.

“From day one, apprentices are placed in a Caliber center alongside an experienced mentor,” she explained. They learn by “disassembling vehicles, prepping for repairs, assisting in welding or refinishing, and gradually taking on more complex responsibilities like structural repairs, diagnostics, and advanced driver assistance system calibrations.”

For HR leaders, the model illustrates how employers can accelerate talent development by embedding learning directly into daily work while pairing less experienced employees with seasoned mentors.

Natasha Sherwood, director of workforce development for the Independent Electrical Contractors (IEC), in Tampa, Fla., painted an equally urgent picture for the construction industry.

She argued that demographic trends, retirements, and years of underinvestment in career and technical education have dramatically reduced the pipeline of skilled workers entering the trades.

At the same time, demand continues to grow as the country invests in semiconductor manufacturing, electrical grid modernization, transportation electrification, domestic energy production, broadband expansion, and advanced manufacturing facilities.

“Perhaps nowhere is this demand more visible than in the explosive growth of artificial intelligence and the data center infrastructure required to support it,” Sherwood said, citing private-sector investment that has pushed data center construction spending to record levels.

Meeting that demand will require far more skilled electricians than today’s apprenticeship system is producing.

“To wire and power America, we first need enough electricians to do it,” Sherwood said, estimating the country will need approximately 80,000 net new electricians annually over the next decade. Yet according to IEC’s analysis, registered apprenticeship programs in construction are not keeping up with industry demand. Construction industry registered apprenticeship programs produced an estimated 38,000 to 43,000 apprentices who completed the four-to-five-year programs.

“Unfortunately, with the construction industry facing a skilled labor shortage of nearly 350,000 this year and 450,000 projected for 2027, that means America’s apprenticeship system is producing between 10% and 13% of the journeymen needed each year to meet industry demand for labor,” she said.

Policy Differences Center on How to Expand

Although every witness agreed that apprenticeship programs should grow, significant disagreements emerged over the best path forward.

Sherwood emphasized preserving apprenticeship’s employer-led structure, arguing that companies — not government agencies — are best positioned to determine workforce needs and appropriate training standards.

“If government policies make employer participation in the apprenticeship system overly burdensome or inefficient, employer participation will decline and apprenticeship growth will suffer,” she warned.

Sherwood urged policymakers to reduce barriers that discourage employer participation, including restrictive apprentice-to-journey worker ratios in some states and approval processes that delay creation of new apprenticeship programs.

She argued that apprenticeship sponsors need flexibility while maintaining program quality.

“Every additional layer of bureaucracy consumes resources that employers could otherwise invest in recruiting apprentices, expanding classroom instruction, purchasing training equipment, hiring instructors, or serving additional employers,” she said.

Democrats, however, expressed concern that loosening federal requirements could weaken the quality standards that distinguish the DOL’s registered apprenticeships from other workforce training programs.

In addition, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., noted that the Trump administration reduced more than 150 staff from the Employment and Training Administration (ETA), which manages apprenticeships, and proposed to cut ETA funding by 3.5 billion in FY 2027.