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Report/Research

From Options to Action

A Decision-Making Guide for Youth Apprenticeship Models

May 13, 2026

At a Glance

Amid growing interest in youth apprenticeship strategies, JFF’s new tool helps practitioners and adopters navigate models and identify with which model they should align.

Contributors

Krysti Specht Director

Beth Spektor Director

Vanessa Bennett Director

Practices & Centers

Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning

Introduction

The youth apprenticeship (YA) field is at a critical moment. With unprecedented investment and attention, youth apprenticeship stakeholders have an opportunity to build better work-based learning programs.

However, what “youth apprenticeship” means varies widely by state, and a lack of shared definitions makes it difficult to scale strategies that effectively meet the needs of young workers and employers across sectors.

Jobs for the Future’s new Youth Apprenticeship Pathways Navigator can help practitioners and potential adopters navigate the unique models, whether they are launching a first program or scaling an existing one into new sectors, to find the right fit for their program, employers, and participants.

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Check out the tool

Key Questions Before Designing a Program:

What is the purpose of your program? Are you training young adults for employment, providing career exposure or foundational experience, offering comprehensive education and training, or something else altogether?
Are your employer and stakeholder partners seeking a long-term training program, or something quick and agile?
Are you working in a heavily unionized sector?
Have your partners ever been involved in an apprenticeship or pre-apprenticeship program before? If so, what was their experience?
Registered apprenticeship requires some regulatory awareness and navigation. Does your group of stakeholders have an entity (intermediary, secondary education, or postsecondary education partner) that can navigate Registered Apprenticeship regulatory compliance?
Do you need access to federal or state funding to offset costs? What financial resources do you have to build, launch, and maintain your program?
Are you aligning with CTE programs in secondary schools or alternative training programs outside of school?
Are you serving or looking to train a specific population of youth and young adults?
Are you building a program with an established apprenticeship occupation or in a sector where registered apprenticeships are common? Are you building a program in a changing sector that requires agility and high flexibility?

Once the needs and goals of your programming have been established, it is important to anchor in the basics before choosing the right program model(s).

Understanding Youth Apprenticeship: The PAYA Framework

New America’s Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA) defines youth apprenticeship as “a structured, work-based learning program designed to start when apprentices are in high school.” This definition includes both registered and non-registered programs—a designation that is responsive to the needs of local employers and young adults, as well as evolving state policy guidelines (PDF). Youth apprenticeships offer equivalent value to all-ages apprenticeships for both employers and young adult apprentices.

PAYA defines the four core elements of youth apprenticeship as follows:

Paid on-the-job training supervised by skilled employee mentors

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Related classroom-based learning

Ongoing assessment against established skills and competency standards

Lead to a portable industry-recognized credential and postsecondary credit

Some states, programs, and stakeholders build on the PAYA framework and include the following elements in their YA definitions:

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Wraparound supports

to ensure young adults can actively participate in all aspects of the program

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Mentorship

either included under program management or from another member of influence at a firm

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Lead to continued employment

and/or postsecondary enrollment

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Targeted for young adults

ages 16-24 (specific age minimums or limits may vary by state)

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Highly structured

to ensure young adults can participate in all components without compromising their educational and career goals

In addition to defining youth apprenticeship as a postsecondary strategy that culminates in a high school diploma, college credit, and an industry-based credential, PAYA has developed a set of guiding principles for high-quality youth apprenticeship to help design programs that support high-quality experiences for both youth and employer partners.

Whether youth apprenticeships are registered or not, high-quality programs are characterized by PAYA’s quality principles:

Career-oriented

Equitable

Portable

Adaptable

Accountable

Up Next

PAYA logo with a multicolored triangle as the letter "A". Text below reads: "Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship.

This report is supported by the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA), a multi-year, multi-stakeholder initiative, led by New America, that aims to assist innovative organizations around the country in developing robust youth apprenticeship programs that are scaled and replicated to serve students, employers and communities alike.