This article is part of a series from the Center for American Progress exposing how the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda would harm all Americans. This new authoritarian playbook, published by the Heritage Foundation, would destroy the 250-year-old system of checks and balances upon which U.S. democracy has relied and give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives.
For nearly a century, the federal registered apprenticeship system has been transformative for millions of apprentices as a pathway to the middle class. Despite strong evidence that registered apprenticeships provide workers with higher-than-average wages and pathways to good jobs, the far-right authoritarian playbook known as Project 2025 proposes creating a lower-quality parallel program. This would be a fundamental attack on existing, successful registered apprenticeship programs, eliminating the incentives for employers to partner with workers on high-quality training.
Specifically, Project 2025 seeks to revive a failed Trump administration proposal called the Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Program (IRAP), which was quickly reversed by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2021 after President Joe Biden took office. The IRAP model sought to eliminate and weaken quality standards and worker protections for apprenticeship programs, including by assigning oversight authority to third-party industry groups. The end result would have been a system that prioritized corporate interests over workers. However, the Project 2025 proposal goes a step further in the wrong direction, seeking to add religious organizations as eligible providers of apprenticeship programs.
Registered apprenticeships benefit workers and employers alike
Instead of weakening apprenticeships, policymakers should invest more in the existing registered apprenticeship system—which was established by the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937—to strengthen and expand it. According to the Department of Labor, the average starting salary for apprentices that have completed a program is $77,000, and graduates of apprenticeship programs earn more over their lifetime, on average, than their peers who do not complete such programs.
Registered apprenticeship is a proven high-quality earn-and-learn model that leads to family-sustaining jobs in occupations such as manufacturing, construction, and carpentry, among others. Today, there are more than 600,000 apprentices in programs across the country, with registered apprenticeship gaining renewed interest as a workforce development and educational tool to train workers and fill openings in in-demand sectors amid a tight labor market.
Apprenticeships are estimated to have a 93 percent employee retention rate and give employers access to a skilled workforce.
Notably, registered apprenticeship programs do not just benefit workers but also employers. Apprenticeships are estimated to have a 93 percent employee retention rate and give employers access to a skilled workforce, all while leading to reduced turnover as well as improved loyalty and productivity among employees.
Beyond the benefits discussed above, the long-standing registered apprenticeship system includes standards and protections to ensure both the quality of programs and that apprentices are safe while training, attain nationally recognized credentials, and receive progressive wage increases, among other benefits. Other parts of the workforce ecosystem—such as pre-apprenticeships, work-based learning, and career and technical education—could also use more resources to build a stronger pipeline into registered apprenticeships and other options for students and workers.
How unions benefit apprentices
Unions can also improve outcomes for apprentices. In some industries, workers in jointly run labor-management apprenticeship programs do as well as workers with college degrees. For example, in the construction industry, union workers in such programs earn wages that are comparable to those of workers with college degrees. In total, union construction workers earn 46 percent more than nonunion construction workers and have competitive benefits, such as private health insurance coverage.