In my last post on apprenticeships, I argued for a large pay-per-apprentice fund that could spur intermediaries to sell and organize programs for employers and encourage employers to hire apprentices at scale. Since then, a few members of Congress have proposed employer incentives considerably more generous than the one I suggested. The most consequential is the bipartisan WAGES Act, sponsored by Senator Todd Young of Indiana and Representative Nathaniel Moran of Texas. It would provide employers up to $10,000 annually toward an apprentice’s wages and another $10,000 toward other apprenticeship costs. At that scale, federal incentives could dramatically increase employer demand and enable millions more Americans to enter apprenticeships.
But stimulating employer demand is only half the job. If millions more workers are to enter apprenticeship, the system must be capable of accommodating thousands more employer programs without sacrificing quality. That requires faster registration, credible national occupational standards, funding for the classroom component of apprenticeship, much greater use of apprenticeship in government, and sustained research and experimentation.
Make Registration Faster and Easier
One barrier to employer participation in registered apprenticeship is a registration process that, while sometimes smooth, can be slow, complex, and unnecessarily burdensome. Employers operating in more than one state must often register their programs more than once to qualify for state assistance.
Some states are particularly problematic. Writing in 2023, my colleague Zach Boren reported on Pennsylvania’s system:
Once a month, Pennsylvania businesses that want to register apprenticeship programs must make their case before the Apprenticeship Council in a three-minute speech after completing 38 pages of detailed forms. After the presentation, Council members ask questions, critique, approve, or deny the training program. With alarming frequency, they reject most programs on their first attempt.
Pennsylvania and New York are among the states with the most restrictive and cumbersome registration processes. This matters because employers are under no obligation to register their apprenticeship programs at all. If registration imposes substantial costs without providing commensurate benefits, employers can simply remain outside the system. It is striking that Pennsylvania and New York have fewer registered apprentices than Indiana, a much smaller state.
To deal with registration delays, especially by State Apprenticeship Agencies, the U.S. Department of Labor issued new regulations in March 2026. One requires the federal Office of Apprenticeship (OA) to decide within 30 days whether to approve or disapprove a request to register a new program. A second reiterated that State Apprenticeship Councils (SACs) should play no role in approving individual programs, thereby allowing staff to approve a request without having to wait for a monthly or bimonthly council meeting. Currently, states that require SAC approval register fewer programs than other states.
It is too early to know whether these incremental regulatory steps will significantly reduce unnecessary friction in the registered apprenticeship system.
Use Skill Standards and “Safe Harbor” Provisions to Speed Registration and Improve Quality
The government should shift away from approving apprenticeship programs employer by employer and move toward common, high-quality occupational standards and monitoring results. Today, the registration process focuses heavily on the sponsor’s description of the skills and competencies apprentices will learn to achieve competence in an occupation. But, as Stephen Hamilton points out, “The US is an outlier internationally in requiring registration for every new apprenticeship program.” The result is a time-consuming process in which employers must develop their own standards and then wait months or longer for approval. Other successful apprenticeship countries develop minimum skill standards for each recognized occupation, thereby avoiding drawn-out registration processes and uneven quality.
High-quality occupational frameworks for apprenticeship have already been developed by the Urban Institute with sponsorship from the U.S. Department of Labor. But these frameworks currently cover only a small share of apprentice occupations. Even if national skill standards eventually covered all apprentice occupations, requiring their use nationwide could face resistance from employers and apprenticeship offices.
To encourage but not require employers to use well-structured national occupational frameworks, the Office of Apprenticeship could institute a “safe harbor” policy. Employers that adopt approved national occupational frameworks would receive automatic recognition and become eligible for public funding. Employers that prefer to design their own standards would remain free to do so but would go through the regular registration process. Safe harbor would reverse the current incentive structure: employers choosing established, high-quality standards would face less bureaucracy, not more.
To strengthen the system beyond this incremental strategy, the federal government should create a public-private entity to build and maintain apprenticeship standards for all occupations. Such an entity could work with employer groups and education and training organizations to develop the standards and ensure they keep pace with changing skill requirements. It could draw on models in other countries, including Skills England and similar institutions in Australia, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.
Subsidize the Classroom Component of Apprenticeship
Apprenticeship combines paid work with structured education, or what the apprenticeship system calls “related technical instruction.” Much of that education provides general skills that workers can carry from one employer to another. If the government subsidizes the acquisition of general skills through college, there is a strong case for helping finance apprentices' classroom education as well.
The best approach is to provide direct funding based on the number, complexity, and duration of apprenticeships. Another option is to ensure access to existing federal funding for education and training programs, including regular and Workforce Pell Grants, veterans’ education benefits, Perkins Act funding, and funds provided to workforce boards under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.
Make Government a Model Apprenticeship Employer
Governments increasingly encourage private employers to create apprenticeships while using apprenticeships surprisingly little in their own workforces. Federal, state, and local governments employ more than 23 million people, or about 15% of nonfarm employment. Many public-sector jobs are well suited to apprenticeship, including teaching, information technology, accounting, health care, public administration, policing, and firefighting. Yet few agencies use apprenticeships as a talent recruitment and skill-development tool.
The federal government could lead the way by directing the Office of Personnel Management to create enough apprenticeships to reach 1.5% of the federal workforce within three years. Federal grants could also provide incentives to state and local governments to increase apprenticeships in the public sector. Teacher apprenticeships for elementary and secondary schools are already spreading, with registered teacher apprenticeship programs starting or operating in 45 states.
Fund Research and Demonstrations
A rapidly growing apprenticeship system will inevitably produce successes and failures. The federal government should build systematic learning into the expansion by funding research and demonstrations rather than waiting years to discover which approaches work.
Learning what works best for increasing completion rates is one priority. Another is a demonstration project to improve linkages between the United Services Military Apprenticeship Program (USMAP), with over 100,000 apprentices, and the civilian sector. A third is determining how best to undertake cost-effective, independent auditing of apprenticeship programs.
The momentum behind apprenticeship expansion in the United States is building, and substantially greater employer funding could accelerate it dramatically. But money alone will not create a modern apprenticeship system. If the United States wants apprenticeship to move from the margins of workforce policy to become a mainstream pathway serving millions of workers, it must make the system easier to enter, establish credible standards, fund the educational component, use apprenticeship throughout government, and continually learn from experience.
The goal should be not simply more apprenticeships, but a system that achieves scale while maintaining quality
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America’s leading expert on apprenticeship shares practical tips for policymakers on how they can massively scale up the earn while you learn route.