As part of his promise to restore American manufacturing and the fortunes of the working class, President Donald Trump pledged to expand trade apprenticeships. In an April executive order, Trump directed the Department of Labor to deliver within 120 days a plan “to reach and surpass 1 million new active apprentices.”
That deadline has passed, with no evidence of progress or even a plan to reach the one-million apprenticeship milestone.
Instead, drastic layoffs, funding cuts, and a purge of “DEI”-related initiatives have sabotaged the emerging apprenticeship movement. Growth in apprenticeships is at its slowest in years, far more sluggish than during Joe Biden’s administration or even the president’s first term. At its current pace, former DOL senior staffer Nick Beadle told me, “I don’t see them getting to 1 million apprentices till 2032.”
During Biden’s tenure, the government invested nearly $730 million to expand registered apprenticeships. But it was from 2016 to 2020, the last year of Obama’s administration and f Trump’s first term, that apprenticeships posted double-digit percentage increases each year, according to government data. By the end of Biden’s term, in fiscal 2024, there were more than 670,000 active apprentices—or nearly double the roughly 359,000 apprentices in fiscal 2015.
But this year, the number of new apprentices has grown by only about 3 percent so far, according to Zach Boren, Senior Vice President of Apprenticeships for America and the former chief of registered apprenticeship and policy for the Department of Labor. “We’ve got a White House that has really good talking points on apprenticeship, but no road map,” Boren said.
One major problem: the gutting of the DOL’s Office of Apprenticeships, first by Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative, and then by the exodus of key staff. There’s literally no one available to write a plan, let alone implement it.
The office lost its national director and several division chiefs, and staffing levels are down by as much as 30 percent, Boren estimates. The website for the national office lists just three people, all of them designated as “acting.” “The Department of Labor, and especially the Office of Apprenticeship, are running on fumes,” said Boren.
The Trump administration has also paused or canceled grants for apprenticeship programs and apprenticeship research, which means fewer resources for recruiting and preparing apprenticeship candidates, helping employers and community colleges launch apprenticeship programs, or evaluating their effectiveness.
Beadle, an investigative journalist before his stint at the agency, told me that at least $30 million in funding appropriated by Congress last year was never spent and has expired. “I have not seen records that confirm they spent all of the $285 billion [allocated] last year on registered apprenticeship,” said Beadle, who writes about workforce development for the Substack “Jobs That Work.”
In addition, millions of dollars in previously awarded contracts to nonprofits, researchers, and industry intermediaries have been canceled. Among the recipients whose grant was nixed is Reach University, a nonprofit institution that’s pioneering debt-free “apprenticeship degrees.” According to journalist Paul Fain, writing for Work Shift, DOL rescinded $14.7 million in grants to Reach University’s teachers college, including a nearly $10 million grant to one of the institution’s community partners in Louisiana, and another grant to a partner in Arkansas. Through a spokeswoman, Reach University President Joe E. Ross confirmed that as of this writing, the grants had not been reinstated. (Ross also said that “although the grant terminations caused a temporary financial impact, we were able to ensure there was no disruption to any current learner’s degree experience.”)
Other organizations that didn’t receive anticipated funding include the Interstate Renewal Energy Council, which helps facilitate clean energy industry apprenticeships, and the Healthcare Career Advancement Program (H-CAP), which develops apprenticeships in health care, said Apprenticeships for America’s Boren. The administration has also ended research grants related to apprenticeships, according to Work Shift’s Fain, including a project to provide technical assistance to states expanding apprenticeships and evaluations of youth apprenticeship programs. The Office of Apprenticeship’s grants pages currently indicate “no funding opportunities” and “no active awards.”
Given the vital role intermediaries play in creating apprenticeship opportunities, the lack of funding for these groups has effectively severed the pipeline. Boren reports “massive layoffs across the apprenticeship field,” with some organizations even shutting their doors. Boren also regrets the lost momentum among businesses. “We’ve had industry groups that have really gotten excited about apprenticeships, and there’ve been some big investments over the last 10 years,” he said. “Now my question is, how many folks like that are no longer interested?”
Trump’s campaign against “DEI,” however, may prove the most destructive to his stated goal of expanding apprenticeship. While women and minorities are among those most likely to benefit from apprenticeships and to be interested in pursuing them, the Trump administration is committed to shutting them out. As a result, “one million apprentices” will be unattainable if half the workforce is discouraged from participation.
Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical and Wasteful DEI Programs,” signed on his first day in office, has led to the wholesale purge of websites, data, and programs perceived to promote diversity. The Office of Apprenticeship saw the removal of guidance on affirmative action (“access denied,” the site now reads), regulations on equal opportunity hiring (“page under construction,” as shown by an error message), and even the 2024 report on National Apprenticeship Week, which reportedly included descriptions of recruitment efforts for women and minorities (“page not found”).
The administration also canceled dozens of grants under the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) program established in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush, according to a letter sent to DOL by Democratic Reps. Bobby Scott and Rosa DeLauro in May. DOL has since reposted the grants, but the organizations whose awards were terminated are ineligible for this money, reports Mother Jones, and the program no longer prioritizes historically underrepresented groups such as women of color or women with disabilities.
These actions could undo the progress made over the last decade toward making apprenticeships more accessible. While women have historically made up a fraction of apprentices, their ranks had been growing. Between 2014 and 2023, the share of women apprentices rose five percentage points, from 9.2 percent to 14.4 percent, according to a 2024 report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and the number of female apprentices tripled. Today, women in apprenticeships currently number fewer than 100,000, according to DOL’s latest data, and the number of Black Americans in apprenticeships is lower still—at under 90,000.
Much as he did on his show, Trump seems to favor a particular kind of apprentice. A recent social media campaign by the Department of Labor featured what’s presumably Trump’s ideal: a blond, broad-shouldered, AI-generated Aryan avatar ripped straight from the manosphere, with a chiseled jaw and a cleft chin. Historians told the Washington Post that the style of these posts evoked “historical government propaganda, including posters from New Deal-era America and fascist Europe.”
Ultimately, “propaganda” might be all that Trump’s apprenticeship initiatives turn out to be. Like so many of his promises to his working-class base, “one million apprenticeships” will likely prove hollow.
The post Trump’s Broken Promise of “One Million Apprentices” appeared first on Washington Monthly.
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