The Apprenticeship Model Pays You to Learn — And Black Participation Is Under 9%

Imagine a program that pays you while you learn, requires no student debt, leads to an industry-recognized credential upon completion, produces a 93% employment rate for graduates, and results in an average starting salary of $77,000. Now imagine that this program has existed in the United States for over a century, that it currently enrolls 636,000 active participants, that the Department of Labor has called it the single most effective workforce development model in the federal portfolio, and that Black Americans — the demographic group with the highest unemployment rate, the highest student debt burden, and the most to gain from an earn-while-you-learn pathway to the middle class — constitute less than 9% of its participants. You do not have to imagine this program. It exists. It is called registered apprenticeship, and the fact that it remains the best-kept economic secret in America, hidden in plain sight while an entire generation of young Black Americans accumulates crushing debt for degrees that may or may not lead to employment, is one of the most consequential failures of information in our economic life.

The numbers deserve to be stated plainly because they are extraordinary. Registered apprentices earn an average of $60,000 annually during their training period, which typically lasts between one and four years depending on the occupation. They receive structured, on-the-job training from experienced practitioners combined with related technical instruction, often provided through community colleges at no cost to the apprentice. Upon completion, they receive a nationally recognized, portable credential — a journeyworker certificate — that is accepted by employers across the country. Their employment rate upon completion is 93%. Their average starting salary upon completion is $77,000. And according to a Mathematica analysis commissioned by the Department of Labor, apprenticeship completers earn approximately $300,000 more over their careers than comparable workers who did not complete apprenticeships — with zero student debt.

Why Black Participation Is 9%

Black Americans constitute approximately 13.4% of the U.S. population and approximately 12% of the labor force. Their representation in registered apprenticeship — under 9% — is a gap that cannot be explained by interest, aptitude, or geographic distribution. It is explained by three factors that are distinct in their mechanisms but identical in their effect: they keep Black Americans away from one of the most reliable pathways to middle-class employment in the country.

The first factor is historical. The building trades — construction, electrical, plumbing, pipefitting, ironwork — were the original and remain the largest category of registered apprenticeship. And the building trades unions have a documented history of racial exclusion that stretches from the early twentieth century through the civil rights era and, in some locals, into the present. The Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, the International Union of Painters — these organizations operated formal or informal racial barriers for decades, and the effects of that exclusion persist in the demographics of their apprenticeship programs. Recruitment networks in the building trades are heavily relational: current members refer potential apprentices, who tend to come from the same communities, families, and social networks as existing members. When those networks were constructed during an era of explicit racial exclusion, diversifying them requires intentional effort that many locals have been slow to make.

The second factor is informational, and it is arguably the most damaging because it is the most easily remedied. The American educational system, from middle school through high school, is structured around a single dominant narrative about economic advancement: go to college, get a degree, get a job. Guidance counselors, teachers, parents, and the broader culture reinforce this narrative relentlessly, and they reinforce it with particular intensity in Black communities, where a college degree is freighted with the additional symbolism of racial progress and family pride. The result is that millions of young Black Americans enter four-year colleges without ever having been told that an alternative pathway exists — a pathway that pays better than many college degrees, requires no debt, and leads to employment in industries with chronic labor shortages and rising wages.

“We have constructed an educational culture that treats a four-year college degree as the only legitimate pathway to economic success, and in doing so we have hidden from an entire generation the single most effective workforce development program in the United States. The apprenticeship model does not need to replace college. It needs to be presented as what it is: an equally valid, often superior, economic choice.”
— Robert Lerman, American University and Urban Institute

The third factor is geographic. Registered apprenticeship programs are concentrated in states and metropolitan areas with strong union presence and established apprenticeship traditions — the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, the Pacific Northwest. Many majority-Black communities, particularly in the South, have fewer registered apprenticeship programs and less institutional infrastructure to support them. This geographic mismatch is real, but it is also changing: the expansion of apprenticeship into new industries — technology, healthcare, finance, advanced manufacturing — is creating opportunities in regions and sectors where the building trades model never had a foothold.

The New Apprenticeship: Beyond the Hard Hat

The transformation of American apprenticeship over the past decade has been profound, and it has occurred with remarkably little public attention. Apprenticeship is no longer confined to the building trades. It has expanded into technology, where companies like Apprenti, IBM, Google, and Microsoft operate registered apprenticeship programs that train software developers, cybersecurity analysts, cloud engineers, and data scientists. It has expanded into healthcare, where Geisinger Health System operates one of the largest healthcare apprenticeship programs in the country, training medical assistants, pharmacy technicians, and community health workers. It has expanded into finance, where Aon’s apprenticeship program — modeled explicitly on British and German examples — trains insurance, actuarial, and financial services professionals.

These new-sector apprenticeships are particularly promising for Black participation because they bypass the historical union barriers that constrained access in the building trades. They are employer-driven rather than union-driven, which means access is determined by hiring decisions rather than membership networks. They are disproportionately located in urban areas where Black populations are concentrated. And they lead to careers in the highest-growth sectors of the American economy, sectors where demand for skilled workers far exceeds supply and where the wage premium for skilled practitioners is rising.

The German Lesson

Germany apprentices approximately 50% of its young people. This is not a historical accident. It is the product of a deliberate national system — the duales System — that treats apprenticeship as a first-class educational pathway, coequal with university education and supported by industry, government, and educational institutions working in coordination. The result is a youth unemployment rate that is consistently among the lowest in the developed world, a manufacturing sector that produces some of the highest-quality goods on earth, and a middle class that is built on skilled trades and technical expertise rather than on the assumption that everyone must attend a four-year university.

The United States is not Germany. The cultural, institutional, and economic differences are significant. But the principle is transferable: when a society treats skilled trades as dignified, well-compensated, essential work and provides a clear, supported pathway into those trades, the results are higher employment, higher wages, lower inequality, and a more resilient economy. The American apprenticeship system is moving in this direction, but it is moving slowly, and it is leaving Black Americans behind because the barriers to Black participation — historical exclusion, informational gaps, geographic mismatch, and cultural bias toward four-year degrees — are not being addressed with the urgency they demand.

Programs That Are Working

There are programs specifically designed to increase Black participation in apprenticeship, and they are producing results that prove the barriers are surmountable. The North America’s Building Trades Unions’ MC3 program — Multi-Craft Core Curriculum — provides pre-apprenticeship training that prepares underrepresented candidates for apprenticeship entry, with a particular focus on recruiting from communities that the building trades have historically excluded. YouthBuild, a national program that serves low-income young adults aged 16 to 24, combines GED preparation with construction training and apprenticeship pathways, and its participants are disproportionately Black and Latino. In Philadelphia, PowerCorps PHL provides environmental and energy-sector training leading to apprenticeships and careers in growing green industries.

These programs share common elements: they provide wrap-around support — transportation assistance, childcare, mentoring, financial literacy — that addresses the non-academic barriers that disproportionately affect Black apprenticeship candidates. They build pipelines from communities that the apprenticeship system has historically ignored. And they demonstrate, with measurable outcomes, that when Black Americans are given access to apprenticeship opportunities with adequate support, they complete at rates comparable to or higher than other demographic groups.

The ROI That Cannot Be Argued With

The return on investment for apprenticeship is so favorable that it raises an uncomfortable question: why is the college-for-all narrative so persistent when the data supporting alternatives is so strong? The Mathematica analysis found that for every dollar invested in apprenticeship, society receives $28 in return through higher tax revenues, reduced public assistance, and increased economic output. The individual return is equally compelling: an apprentice who would otherwise have attended a four-year college avoids, on average, $40,000 to $120,000 in student loan debt while earning approximately $120,000 to $240,000 in wages during the apprenticeship period. The net advantage — earnings gained plus debt avoided — ranges from $160,000 to $360,000 by the time a college graduate would be finishing repayment of their student loans.

For Black Americans, who carry a disproportionate share of the $1.7 trillion student debt burden and whose college completion rates are significantly lower than white Americans — meaning many Black students incur debt without receiving the degree that would justify it — the apprenticeship model represents not just an alternative pathway but a financially superior one. This is not an argument against college. College remains the optimal choice for students pursuing careers that require it — medicine, law, engineering, academia. But college is not the optimal choice for everyone, and the insistence that it is has produced a generation of young Americans, disproportionately Black, who are carrying debt they cannot repay for credentials that did not lead to the employment they were promised.

What Needs to Happen

Increasing Black participation in apprenticeship from 9% to proportional representation — approximately 13% — would place an additional 25,000 Black Americans per year into earn-while-you-learn pathways that produce $77,000 average starting salaries, zero debt, and 93% employment rates. Reaching parity would require three things, none of which is complicated and all of which are achievable.

First, information. Every Black high school student in America should know, before their junior year, that registered apprenticeship exists, what it pays, what it leads to, and how to apply. This requires changes in guidance counseling, in career and technical education programming, and in the cultural conversation about what constitutes a legitimate path to economic success. Organizations like the National Urban League, the NAACP, Black fraternities and sororities, and Black churches have the networks to disseminate this information to every Black family in the country. They should be doing so.

Second, access. Pre-apprenticeship programs that recruit from Black communities, provide the academic and wrap-around support needed for apprenticeship readiness, and build direct pipelines into registered programs need to be funded at scale. The federal government’s investment in apprenticeship expansion has grown significantly in recent years, but the programs specifically targeting underrepresented communities remain underfunded relative to the need.

Third, accountability. Registered apprenticeship programs that receive federal funding or tax benefits should be required to report demographic data on recruitment, enrollment, completion, and employment, and programs with persistent demographic gaps should be required to develop and implement corrective action plans. This is not affirmative action. It is accountability for public investment, and it is the same standard applied to every other federally funded workforce development program.

The apprenticeship model is not a silver bullet. No single program can solve the complex, multi-dimensional challenge of Black economic advancement. But it is one of the most powerful tools available, it is dramatically underutilized by the community that would benefit most from it, and the reasons for that underutilization are barriers of information, access, and history — not barriers of capacity or interest. Black Americans built the physical infrastructure of this country. They laid the railroads, constructed the buildings, wired the electrical systems, and plumbed the pipes that made modern America possible. They did this work, for the most part, without the formal recognition, fair compensation, and institutional support that apprenticeship provides. The model that would have recognized that work, compensated it fairly, and built it into a pathway for generational wealth existed all along. It is still here. And the only thing standing between Black Americans and one of the most reliable pathways to the middle class in the country is the decision to walk through the door — and the information needed to find it.