Apprenticeships should win out over bureaucrats

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order to boost U.S. apprenticeship programs. These training programs convey skills to individuals for specific vocations.

Currently, 505,000 people have apprenticeships through 2,100 programs registered with the government. President Donald Trump has committed to creating 5 million apprenticeships over the next five years.

I get nervous whenever I hear about any government initiative that claims to provide what our economy needs. The last thing we need is a new army of government bureaucrats pretending they are going to forecast what kind of jobs we need and then subsidizing businesses and unions to set up training programs.

But Trump’s plan doesn’t appear to do that. It establishes a wide berth for firms, or unions, or trade associations to decide on their own what they need to do, meaning those who are actually doing the work and the hiring.

The U.S. Labor Department reported 6 million job openings in April and 5 million hires. So a million jobs are still open.

In April, there were 6.9 million unemployed. Isn’t this the work we need to do — get those who can’t find work trained and motivated?

And if we care about our nation’s future, we’ve got to look at the deeper social problems leading to pockets of chronic unemployment.

There are 1.7 million long-term unemployed. We have a growing population, disproportionately prime-age men, who have just dropped out of the labor force.

The black unemployment rate has been double the national average for the last half-century. Black youths ages 16 to 19 have an unemployment rate of 27.3 percent.

So, what can government do?

Trump is proposing the federal government put up $200 million to help firms make these apprenticeships happen. Good, but we can’t rely on new government spending to be the answer.

The answer is removing barriers. For one, consider vocational schools and training as part of education choice.

Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee introduced a bill, the Enhancing Educational Opportunities for All Students Act, in the last Congress that would permit use of funds that the federal government gives to school districts to help low-income children and use it to enable them to be able to attend the school of their choice.

Give a poor child a voucher, or the equivalent, that can be used to go to a vocational school. Businesses could help finance and build the programs to train these kids.

So let’s dust off and pass the Enhancing Educational Opportunities bill. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is the right person in the right place to help make this happen.

Second, let businesses use the funds they spend on training to count toward salary for purposes of the minimum wage.

This would allow a firm to hire a young person and pay below minimum wage but also provide training, the value of which would hike the wage above the minimum. This is a way around the damage that the minimum wage causes and provides a platform for unskilled youth to get trained.

If we use government to make the marketplace more free and flexible, apprenticeships can help build a 21st-century American labor force.