Recently the Biden-Harris Administration announced the launch of the Apprenticeship Ambassador Initiative, a national network of more than 200 employers and industry organizations, labor organizations, educators, workforce intermediaries, and community-based organizations who are all determined to expand and diversify Registered Apprenticeships.
Members of the Apprenticeship Ambassadors Initiative have existing Registered Apprenticeship programs in over 40 in-demand industries. The programs have also committed to expanding and diversifying their programs over the next year by developing 460 new Registered Apprenticeship programs across their 40 industries, hiring over 10,000 new apprentices, and holding 5,000 events to help other leaders launch similar programs.
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Ambassadors will also use their expertise to scale innovative practices and increase access to Registered Apprenticeships with a focus on serving historically marginalized groups, including women, people of color, people with arrest or conviction records, and people with disabilities.
“By partnering with employers and industry stakeholders, the Apprenticeship Ambassador Initiative has produced commitments to create nearly 500 new Registered Apprenticeships programs. These results will increase our skilled workforce equipping them with good-paying, high-quality jobs and a pathway to the middle class.”
Marty Walsh, U.S. Secretary of Labor
This new Initiative builds on the President's current efforts to expand Registered Apprenticeships, which include investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Registered Apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships and launching an Apprenticeship Accelerator that has worked to speed up the time it takes to get approval to start a new program from months to days.
The Administration’s efforts have already helped develop over 4,000 new Registered Apprenticeship programs, add 6,700 new employer partners participating in Registered Apprenticeship programs, and led to the hiring of more than one million apprentices with around 93 percent of workers who complete Registered Apprenticeships gain employment and earn an annual average starting wage of $77,000.
Registered Apprenticeships also help employers attract, train, and retain a skilled and diverse workforce. The Initiative will help to ensure there is a skilled, diverse workforce to implement the President’s economic agenda including tackling the supply chain challenge and filling new clean energy, manufacturing and technology, and infrastructure jobs as well as other high-demand sectors like healthcare and cybersecurity.
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