Reaching the Goal of One Million Apprenticeships

For more than a decade, expanding Registered Apprenticeship has been a consistent, bipartisan workforce priority in the United States. Under the Obama administration, efforts focused on “doubling and diversifying” Registered Apprenticeships to open pathways into a wider range of industries and for a broader population of workers. The Biden Administration continued and built on that approach, emphasizing expanding access, sector expansion, and stronger connections between apprenticeship and emerging economic priorities. Today, the Trump administration has set a new benchmark—aiming to reach one million active apprentices nationwide—framing apprenticeship as central to ensuring that American workers capture the jobs being created by domestic reindustrialization and AI deployment. 

Across these administrations, the rationale for investing in apprenticeship has remained largely consistent. Registered Apprenticeship offers a proven “earn-and-learn” model that equips workers with employer-validated skills, supports wage progression, and avoids student debt. Its track record—spanning more than 80 years—has demonstrated strong outcomes for both workers and employers, including higher earnings, improved retention, and reliable talent pipelines. These strengths have made apprenticeship an appealing policy lever for addressing persistent workforce challenges, from skills gaps in construction and manufacturing to the need for talent in emerging and technology-driven sectors. 

As economic conditions evolve and political environments change, apprenticeship has been repeatedly positioned as a practical solution to connect workers to opportunity while helping employers fill critical roles. The current push toward one million apprentices reflects the latest phase of a long-running national effort to scale a model that has consistently delivered results but has been challenging to scale to the levels that policymakers have sought.  This brief provides JFF’s analysis of where the current slowdown is coming from, which states and sectors present the largest growth opportunities, and what specific actions — all achievable within existing authority and aligned with the President’s executive order — can accelerate the path to one million. 

Challenges to Reaching 1 Million Apprentices

National Trend: Deceleration and Plateauing (Figures 1 & 2)

While progress has been made and these actions are promising initial steps – the U.S. is still not at the scale needed.

The growth of the RA system over the past decade has been remarkable.  Registered Apprenticeship alone is the single largest training delivery system overseen by ETA, providing training to more individuals each year (300,000+ new apprentices annually) than all of WIOA Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth programs combined (fewer than 200,000 receiving training in PY24 based on data provided by DOL) and likely more than all of ETA managed programs combined. But now the growth of the Registered Apprenticeship system is plateauing. Active apprentice counts grew at least 10% annually from FY2015 through FY2019 before being impacted by COVID when rates compressed to 2–4% per year from FY2020–FY2022. Post-COVID, year-over-year growth peaked in FY23 at 6.2% and is declining by almost 0.4% each year.  At current trajectory, the system reaches only ~850,000 by FY2030 — over 150,000 short of the President’s goal (Figure 8). 

State Trends: Three Patterns That Explain the Slowdown (Figures 3 & 4)

While the vast majority of States have driven national growth achieving near or surpassing the national average over the past decade, some states are being left behind or missing opportunities for even greater growth.  In reality, the national deceleration is not uniform — it is occurring with 3 distinct state-level patterns, each requiring a different response. 

Left Behind Cohort.  The first cohort is states with little, no, or negative absolute growth, where active counts have remained essentially flat despite continued federal investment and rising employer demand. At least 4 States fit this profile with 3 of those States actually have fewer apprentices today than in 2016.  These states have likely reached the limits of their current sponsor and program base without adopting new strategies, such as expanding into new occupations, engaging additional sectors, or bringing in new sponsors. 

Need to Catch Up Cohort.  The second category includes states with well below-average absolute growth relative to the national benchmark (77% since FY16) despite established apprenticeship infrastructure and long-standing sponsors have seen more gradual expansion even with expanding economic needs. At least 6 States reflect these patterns with steady but more measured progress (less than half of the national average) that may benefit from continued efforts to expand into emerging sectors and scale alongside changing workforce demand. 

Further Room to Grow Cohort.  The third category includes those states with strong absolute growth that nonetheless remain well below their workforce penetration potential. These typically larger states have seen meaningful increases in active apprentice counts in recent years, supported by continued economic expansion and sustained demand across construction and other key sectors. However, when measured against the size of their labor forces, participation remains relatively low—each falling well short of the national benchmark of roughly 4.2 apprentices per 1,000 workers. Despite their scale and growth, these states still represent significant opportunity that if they were operating at the national workforce penetration rate, they would account for tens of thousands of additional apprenticeship seats.  At least four States reflect these dynamics, combining substantial growth over the past decade with substantial remaining capacity to further expand and build on these efforts.

Sector and National Dynamics: Where Growth Has Stalled (Figure 5)

The Administration’s stated priorities — manufacturing, construction, AI/tech, and other skilled trades — are exactly the sectors where RA growth has been slowest relative to need: 

• Construction: While likely under-reported in the data, apprentices in construction and extraction-related occupations is still the largest SOC cluster of occupations at 46.8% of all active apprentices (down from over 53% in FY2016). The building trades union infrastructure that powered earlier growth is mature and growing more slowly than the system as a whole (48% compared to 77%). Non-union construction expansion into RA is growing (including year over year growth of over 17% in the last two years) but overall penetration is still limited at approximately 85,000 active apprentices. Yet the White House has identified a shortage of 447,000 construction workers — the largest single workforce gap in the country. 
• Manufacturing: The Administration’s reshoring agenda, CHIPS Act investments, and tariff policies are designed to bring manufacturing back to America. But RA has shown modest growth in the manufacturing industry over the past decade, and there are only approximately 30,000 active apprentices in the sector (significantly less than 1% of the manufacturing workforce). The new national manufacturing fund has the potential to incentivize more manufacturers seeking new talent pipelines, but additional support is likely needed. 
• AI/tech and cybersecurity: Growing rapidly in absolute terms but from a tiny base and facing competition from alternative credentialing strategies. DOL’s AI Action Plan mandate creates a direct hook for expanding RA in these occupations and DOL’s plans to fund an AI in Registered Apprenticeship Technical Assistance Center can accelerate that process. 
• Healthcare and education: These sectors represent success stories — healthcare is up over 800% since FY2015 and teacher apprenticeships now in 46 states — but still small as a share of total volume. 

Finally, national apprenticeship programs registered by USDOL represent an underutilized mechanism that is attractive to large employers operating in multiple states and industry associations that have the capacity to operate multi-employer apprenticeship programs at a national scale. Not including USMAP, national programs as a whole now rank 3rd in terms of the number of active apprentices only behind California and Texas (compared to 11th in 2016), National programs grew 179% from 2016 to 2024 but growth began to slow in 2022 and actually declined in 2025.  Greater marketing of national programs particularly to industry associations and large employers offer an immediate opportunity to expand the number of active apprentices significantly.

Attacking the Cancellation Challenge (Figure 6)

Growing the front door (new and active apprentices) is only half the equation. The back door — cancellations — is quietly eroding the impact of every new seat added to the system, and it deserves the same strategic attention as registration reform and new sponsor formation. 

The numbers are stark. With approximately 300,000 new starts per year and an average program duration of roughly 2.3 years, the system processes an estimated 150,000–160,000 cancellations annually — compared to approximately 120,000 completions. Social Finance’s analysis of RAPIDS data found that of apprentices who started programs in 2017, only 46.8% completed within six years — a generous measurement window, since most programs are designed to finish in four years or fewer. Cancellations essentially represent the single largest category of exit from the active apprenticeship stock. 

The decade-long growth in new starts makes this especially costly. As new starts climbed from roughly 150,000 per year in FY2015 to over 300,000 today, the pool of apprentices exposed to cancellation risk more than doubled. If programs had sustained even a 60% completion rate — rather than the current ~47% — over that decade of ramp-up, approximately 286,000 additional apprentices would have persisted through completion rather than cancelling out without a single new registration or employer recruitment effort. 

The forward-looking math is equally compelling. At today’s scale of ~300,000 new starts per year, each percentage point improvement in the completion rate prevents approximately 3,000 cancellations annually. Because those retained apprentices stay enrolled for an average of roughly another year before completing, each percentage point of improvement translates to approximately 3,500 additional active apprentices at any given moment. According to Social Finance, the increments add up quickly such that by 2030: 

• A 5-percentage-point improvement in completion rates — entirely achievable through structured early intervention — would prevent roughly 15,000 cancellations per year and add approximately 18,500 to the active count. 
• A 10-percentage-point improvement would prevent ~30,000 cancellations annually and add approximately 37,000 to the active count — closing about a third of the remaining gap to one million through retention alone. 
• A 20-percentage-point improvement — bringing the system to roughly the completion rates seen in the best-performing state and sector programs — would prevent ~60,000 cancellations per year and add almost 100,000 to the active count. 

These gains come from apprentices who are already enrolled, already matched to an employer, and already earning wages. The interventions that research and practitioner experience identify as most effective are not expensive: improved conversion from pre-apprenticeship programs, structured check-ins at 90 and 180 days (the highest-risk cancellation window); mentorship pairing in the first year; small targeted supports — transportation assistance, tool stipends, childcare help — that resolve the practical barriers most commonly cited in exit surveys; and proactive re-engagement when attendance or progress flags.  

Conclusion

The goal of reaching one million active apprentices represents a natural next step in the strong, bipartisan progress that has already provided the foundation to expand Registered Apprenticeship across the country. The system’s growth over the past decade—alongside increasing engagement from employers, states, and new industry sectors—demonstrates a solid foundation to build upon.

The recommendations outlined here are designed to accelerate that momentum by strengthening coordination, unlocking new pathways, and reinforcing the elements that have driven success to date. By aligning public investment with private-sector leadership, expanding access points through youth and degree models, supporting state innovation, and enhancing retention, the Administration can catalyze the next phase of growth. With sustained focus and collaboration, Registered Apprenticeship is well positioned to scale as a cornerstone of the nation’s workforce strategy—broadening opportunity for workers while meeting the evolving talent needs of the American economy.