Trump touts apprenticeships to fill jobs gap
PEWAUKEE, Wis. — The man who parlayed a run on TV’s “The Apprentice” into a winning presidential campaign said Tuesday the nation needs a stronger system of apprenticeship to match workers with millions of open jobs.
“I love the name apprentice,” President Trump declared. He said he wants every high school in America to offer apprenticeship opportunities and hands-on learning.
Joined in Wisconsin by daughter Ivanka Trump and Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, Trump described his push to get private companies and universities to pair up and pay the cost of such arrangements.
“It’s called earn while you learn,” Trump said at Waukesha County Technical College.
The president toured the technical college, accompanied by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The White House said Trump’s push is aimed at training workers with specific skills for particular jobs that employers say they can’t fill at a time of historically low unemployment. However, the most recent budget for the federal government passed with about $90 million for apprenticeships, and Trump so far isn’t proposing to add more.
The Trump administration has said there’s a need that can be met with a change in the American attitude toward vocational education and apprenticeships. A November 2016 report by former President Barack Obama’s Commerce Department found that “apprenticeships are not fully understood in the United States, especially” by employers, who tend to use apprentices for a few, hard-to-fill positions” but not as widely as they could.
The shortages for specifically trained workers cut across multiple job sectors beyond Trump’s beloved construction trades. There are shortages in agriculture, manufacturing, information technology and health care.
Participants in some apprentice programs get on-the-job training while going to school, sometimes with companies footing the bill.
IBM, for example, participates in a six-year program called P-TECH. Students in 60 schools across six states begin in high school, when they get a paid internship, earn an associate’s degree and get first-inline consideration for jobs from 250 participating employers.
It relies on funds outside the apprenticeship program — a challenge in that the Trump budget plan would cut spending overall on job training. The program uses $1.2 billion in federal funding, said P-TECH co-founder Stan Litow.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, DWis., said Trump’s “rhetoric doesn’t match the reality” of budget cuts he’s proposing that would reduce federal job training funding by 40 percent from $2.7 billion to $1.6 billion.