Three questions about reaching one million apprentices.

The Trump Administration is laser-focused on hitting one million apprentices. A lot of people don’t think it’s going well. There are three questions I have about what’s next.

Next week is National Apprenticeship Week, that special time of year when all the kids set out their career ladders and St. Competency leaves them an industry-recognized credential provided they’ve completed 2,000 hours of on-the-job training in an apprenticeable occupation Apprenticeship World celebrates Registered Apprenticeship’s successes and tries to move forward the art of training people on the job to master the job. In some ways, though, this year could be a touch fraught.

For the more lightly initiated, apprenticeship is a very structured, step-by-step program where someone is paid to do a job while learning it. Registered Apprenticeship is a voluntary consumer-protection program that is the main way that the United States regulates apprenticeship by recognizing better programs. It’s ultimately controlled by the Department of Labor, but DOL has deputized about half the states to register and oversee programs to make sure they’re still in compliance with the rules, meant to ensure the quality of jobs and safety of training.

The big news, of course, is that the Trump Administration just fired its labor secretary. While she reportedly wasn’t terribly involved in the policy decisions driving it, Lori Chavez-DeRemer had at least fashioned herself as the primary public saleswoman for its push to get to one million active registered apprentices, a hard-to-reach number that, as of today, public-facing DOL numbers indicate it is approximately 300,000 apprentices short of.

This year’s National Apprenticeship Week theme name—”America at Work: Making America Skilled Again”—references both Chavez-DeRemer’s cross-country tour bound up in the scandals that led to her departure and the White House Make America Skilled Again block grants that even a quite deferential Republican Congress hasn’t meaningfully entertained. Until a few minutes ago, Chavez-DeRemer’s picture remained on the National Apprenticeship Week website.

As you might imagine when the boss quits amid scandal, things aren’t regarded as going great. I really haven’t heard from anyone other than Administration officials who thinks the climb to one million is going well. The most positive talk I have seen or heard about the effort came from Chavez-DeRemer, who is gone.

The complaints I have heard from Apprenticeship World in recent weeks have been that the Department’s plans seem more and more unfocused. It’s a vast difference from where we were at the top of the year, when there was a gush of enthusiasm for Trump Administration pay-to-train incentives funds following the announcement of a $145 million investment. (More on some of those incentives tomorrow.)

Many folks I’ve spoken with say Trump II’s big investments in pay-to-train projects turned out too complicated and offer too little money to get big or small employers on board.¹ There’s also been an intimation that one million apprentices is too much of the focus. I have heard persistent worries about how far the definition of apprenticeship will get stretched to meet what several apprenticeship advocates see as an arbitrary number.

To those concerns, I think White House’s less-public expectations for apprenticeship are quite aggressive, based on what I’m hearing. I think agency leaders do a pretty good job selling their workforce priorities when they’re given the space to do so by the White House. Some of those priorities are pretty aligned with the ideas I write about in this space and what I hear is needed from both sides of the aisle. But the White House is, you know, the White House. They aren’t quite so attuned, they like to gripe and fight even when it costs them broader support, and they’ll win the big arguments within the Administration because they are, again, the White House.

Or, to put this all more succinctly: everything is weird right now.

For what it’s worth, I remain a big apprenticeship believer because it solves both employers and workers’ big workforce needs at once. Employers get someone doing the job right away, and workers get paid to learn. And while there is plenty of room to be downbeat, one million apprentices isn’t the worst goal. I just think it pays to be realistic about what’s needed and what’s next.

So today, ahead of a lot of events and conversations next week about apprenticeship, I’m going to cover three big questions I’m not hearing asked enough about Trump II’s Registered Apprenticeship strategy. I have some ideas about where I would go next if I were trying to get to one million apprentices in the current environment, some of which I can comfortably say don’t seem Trump-compatible. Which is part of the problem.

A quick flag: I won’t get into the biggest debate here I expect to blow up soon, which is DOL’s relationship with states deputized to register programs. I think that belongs in a different space updating what I wrote last month about some significant new DOL guidance.