President Donald J. Trump last week issued an executive order aimed at expanding federal apprenticeship programs, increasing funding for apprenticeships to $200 million while loosening restrictions on how they're regulated.
“We’re training people to have great jobs and high-paying jobs,” Trump said at a White House ceremony Thursday (June 15). “We’re here today to celebrate the dignity of work and the greatness of the American worker.”
What He’s Proposing
Although the plan is to increase the funding for apprenticeships, it won’t necessarily be from new funds. Trump’s budget proposes cuts to federal job-training funding by as much as 40 percent—from $2.7 billion to $1.6 billion.
However, he is also directing a government review of 43 workforce programs and 13 agencies, and officials have suggested that the “new funds” would actually come from existing money that has been shuffled around from that streamlining process.
The order aims to address the “skills gap” that has influenced labor shortages, such as the estimated 500,000-job shortage in the construction industry, and the 6 million vacant jobs in the United States.
The Associated Builders and Contractors applauded the move, pointing to both the job shortage and the industry’s stake in apprenticeships.
“Associated Builders and Contractors looks forward to working with the secretaries of labor, commerce and education to implement the executive order and develop new, innovative and effective models to train an expanding American workforce,” said ABC President and CEO Mike Bellaman.
“With our industry in need of half a million workers today and even more in the future, we need to expand upon current apprenticeship methods that have left us with a worker shortage and embrace an all-of-the-above training approach to meet the needs of a 21st century workforce. "
While expanding apprenticeships and creating jobs gets bipartisan support in general, the executive order has been met with skepticism from both the privatization and funding standpoints.