The Trump Administration is putting its rhetorical weight behind apprenticeships in its budget request for the coming year and in executive orders last week—but it’s not clear that dollars will actually follow.

In one order, the president set a goal for the country to hit 1M apprentices, and specifically said it would expand registered apprenticeships. That was notable given that the first Trump administration eschewed the registered system and instead attempted to create a new class of industry-recognized apprenticeships. A second order on AI in education also called for a major role for apprenticeship.

Workforce leaders across the political spectrum publicly celebrated the elevation of registered apprenticeship. However, many we spoke with also cautioned that the specifics are still quite vague and that cuts are more in vogue in Washington than new investment.

“As with many things in this administration, the devil is really in the details,” says Harin Contractor, director of workforce innovation at the Burning Glass Institute, who worked on apprenticeship in the Biden White House. 

Both federal spending cuts and economic uncertainty may work against the stated goals of the current White House.

To meaningfully expand apprenticeship in the U.S. requires not only sound policy and infrastructure—but also employer demand for skilled workers, says Deborah Kobes, senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “Success also depends on how much uncertainty exists in the market, because apprenticeship is a long-term strategy.”

What We Know: As of now, it doesn’t appear that the administration plans to put federal dollars behind its big goal, at least in the coming year.

  • The budget proposal would direct states to spend at least 10% of their MASA workforce funds on apprenticeship. With current funding for registered apprenticeships at $285M, that would essentially keep funding flat. 

However, the budget document also did not specify that the 10% requirement would be for registered apprenticeships, and it stressed state control and flexibility. It’s unclear whether that was intentional signaling that states would be able to spend the funds outside of the registered system or if it was simply an oversight.

Work Shift reached out to both the Department of Labor and the Office of Management and Budget for clarification and additional detail on the proposal but had not heard back by press time.

“So far with this skinny budget we have no idea,” says Mary Alice McCarthy, senior director of the Center on Education and Labor at New America. “What we do know is that DOL is canceling grants and contracts to support the expansion of registered apprenticeship.”

A grant for teacher apprenticeships that New America was partnering with RTI International on was canceled just last week, she says. And others were cut in earlier rounds of grant cancellations as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s cost-cutting and anti-DEI efforts.

“Any growth is going to require investment at the state and federal level,” says Vanessa Bennett, director of the Center for Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning at Jobs for the Future. The group is out this week with a new apprenticeship policy blueprint that it hopes will inform federal and state action.

Stepping Back: Taken together, the executive orders, the budget proposal, and cuts to Labor Department staff make it clear the Trump administration plans to give much more responsibility for and control over apprenticeship to the states.

Many workforce experts expect that will include a push to move all program approval authority to the states, through State Apprenticeship Agencies (SAAs). The current system includes a mix of state and federal approval authority, with just under half of states still relying on the department’s Office of Apprenticeship to register and provide technical assistance for programs.

The number of states with their own apprenticeship agencies, the SAAs, has already been growing.

State View: Alabama made that move five years ago. Josh Laney heads the Office of Apprenticeship there, which is highly regarded by other states. He favors a state-led model for apprenticeship, in part because it can be more responsive to regional needs and to smaller employers. But that structure still requires strong coordination at the federal level, he says.

As it is, there is already too much inconsistency across states, with no universal occupational standards and limited reciprocity—which makes it hard for workers who move between states, and for employers with a multistate footprint.

“It still needs to be a national system,” he says.

Laney also questions the focus on growing the sheer number of apprentices, a metric that has been used in both Republican and Democratic administrations and in other states. In Alabama, his office focuses on the number of employers served and whether apprenticeships are moving people into high-impact occupations.

His biggest concern, though, would be a plan that just lumps apprenticeships in with WIOA programs, without major changes to the restrictions and reporting requirements that have historically turned employers off. Any such changes would have to be done through legislation in Congress.

The Kicker: “We don’t want apprenticeship to look more like WIOA,” Laney says. “We want WIOA to look more like apprenticeship.”