Abstract
The share of US workers who undertake apprenticeship training is small compared to most other OECD countries and compared to the number of workers who undertake postsecondary education. However, the scale of the US apprenticeship is large compared with the training funded through the federal Workforce Investment Act. Historically, US apprenticeship programmes have been highly concentrated in construction, manufacturing, and other selected fields, including public safety and some military occupations. Although the federal government has funded efforts to establish apprenticeships outside these traditional sectors, the gains have so far been modest. This paper describes how the US registered apprenticeship system operates and examines the benefits of apprenticeship for workers and employers. In addition to presenting data on the earnings gains for workers, the paper describes new evidence showing that employer sponsors of apprenticeship investments perceive the programme as highly desirable and worth expanding.
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Notes
- 1.
These are differences in log wages based on tabulations in Table 3.17 from The State of Working America 2006/2007 and accessible on the Economic Policy Institute web site as http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/datazone_dznational.
- 2.
In 1990, only 19 per cent of students with a vocational concentration completed the “New Basics” program of academic courses (4 years of English and 3 years of math, science, and social science). By 2000, 51 per cent of vocational concentrators did so.
- 3.
The share of students who were occupational concentrators dropped from nearly 34 to about 25 per cent between 1982 and 1990 and remained at the lower rate through 2000. Seniors who were occupational concentrators and took at least one advanced course in the occupational field declined from 24 to 14.4 per cent of all seniors from 1982 to 1998.
- 4.
Registered apprenticeship sponsors were asked in the survey if organized labor was involved in their program. Those sponsors that responded ‘yes’ are referred to as sponsors of ‘joint’ programmes in this report.
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Lerman, R.I. (2010). Apprenticeship in the United States: Patterns of Governance and Recent Developments. In: Smith, E., Rauner, F. (eds) Rediscovering Apprenticeship. Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3116-7_11
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