Trump signs order on job training programs
President Donald Trump is taking one the most concrete steps of his presidency on Thursday to address the employment prospects of workers left behind by the current economic expansion.
In doing so, he also joins a long-running and occasionally contentious debate over whether those workers have the skills they need to land desirable jobs.
Trump’s action comes in the form of an executive order expanding federally funded apprenticeship programs.
The order would create a category of programs that industry groups and other third parties could develop and then submit for Labor Department approval, rather than working within existing department guidelines.
“Apprenticeships place students into great jobs without the crippling debt of traditional fouryear college degrees,” Trump said. “Instead apprentices earn while they learn.”
Trump would redirect over $100 million of federal job training money to pay for the new apprenticeships, supplementing $90 million in funding for the existing program.
Corporate groups hailed the idea of expanding apprenticeship programs and making them more flexible, arguing that apprenticeships are a reliable path to good-paying jobs in sectors like retail and hospitality for those who could no longer support themselves in production sectors like manufacturing.
“We applaud the Department of Labor and the administration for being willing to look at how to craft this in a way that brings apprenticeships to a new range of audiences,” said Rob Gifford, executive vice president of the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, which oversees the industry group’s apprenticeship programs.
Gifford gave credit to the Obama administration for making industries like his eligible for apprenticeship funding.
The restaurant industry group won a contract worth up to about $9.75 million under the Obama-era program to create apprenticeships that would run from six months to two years and help candidates for management positions acquire skills in such areas as accounting and sanitation practices.
But Gifford said that streamlining regulations could make apprenticeship programs even more effective.
The administration’s interest in apprenticeships stands in contrast to the cutbacks for other forms of job training in its budget proposal, involving far larger sums.
The Association of Community College Trustees said that while it welcomed Thursday’s move, it remained worried about “the severe cuts proposed to federal workforce and education programs.”
Underlying the relatively modest size and scope of Trump’s proposal is a much bigger idea about why workers who have lost good-paying jobs that do not require a college degree are struggling to find work at comparable wages.