BACKGROUND

Apprenticeship builds skills at the intersection of worker and employer interests. It provides relevant work experience, on-the-job learning, employment during training, and wage rewards for skill gains. In 2016 the Department of Labor invested more than $145 million to expand and diversify the nation’s Registered Apprenticeship (RA) program. Building on a long and impressive history of apprenticeship, this investment aimed to modernize apprenticeship to reach new industries and new workers. This investment is an opportunity to build a system responsive to the needs of both workers and employers. Here, we focus on apprenticeships that also build economic mobility for disadvantaged populations, extending opportunity to workers – often women and people of color – who have been excluded too often in the past.

This project consists of four case studies of equity in apprenticeship and this brief that synthesizes lessons from the cases. Our cases span both the country and the economy. Three of our cases examine mature partnerships in urban areas. In California’s South Bay, the Joint Workforce Initiative (JWI) established by the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority (VTA), affiliated unions, and other partners, has developed an impressive and effective inter-related web of transit apprenticeships. The Worker Education and Resource Center (WERC) in Los Angeles has become highly adept at using apprenticeship to train health care workers who share a cultural affinity with LA’s patient populations. The Industrial Manufacturing Technician (IMT) program builds an intermediate step up in production jobs and is the product of long-standing collaboration between labor and management leaders in Milwaukee’s manufacturing sector. The fourth case study of Montana’s new Tribal College Apprenticeship offers a look at how apprenticeship plays out in rural areas and explores the impact that partnerships new to apprenticeships can have on equity.

These four case studies show the diverse ways that practitioners are rising to the opportunity to build new apprenticeships with equity as a central component. Their impressive work should be amplified and disseminated.

This brief synthesizes the lessons from these case studies and offers actionable policy and practice recommendations. Equity in apprenticeship will require greater investment and focus from a broad community: policy makers, advocates, practitioners, public and private funders, and industry leaders from both management and labor. This brief is intended to inform that community about the real prospects for equity in apprenticeship, the practical tools that these leading cases demonstrate, and policy lessons that can be drawn from them.

Defining Equity

This project requires a working definition of equity. Very broadly, we adopt the definition from PolicyLink’s Equity Manifesto: equity is “just and fair inclusion into a society in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential. [It is about] unlocking the promise of the nation by unleashing the promise in us all.” Equity is thus both a moral and an economic imperative. This is a broad, aspirational, and inspiring definition. Throughout this brief we offer concrete suggestions to bring the aspiration of equity into reality.

Equity in Apprenticeship calls for the equity frame to animate in us all greater effort, innovation, and impact. Yes, tactical steps help move apprenticeship toward better outcomes for the workers who have been excluded in the past. These concrete steps must be taken. But true equity will require that we also revise our notions of power, value, and capital. We cannot simply follow a series of steps for equity without simultaneously committing to the intense work of attending to and altering power and value in our work as well. In this project, we identify the ways that cases are taking on the re-imagination that true equity requires.

Equity ≠ Diversity ≠ Equality

Equity, diversity, and equality are not interchangeable terms. Equity recognizes and compensates for differences to get to equitable results. Due to historic underinvestment, disenfranchisement, and oppression, and the continuing power structures society has yet to rectify, some groups (such as women and/or people of color) need additional mechanisms of support and opportunity to realize their full potential.

Equity is not the same as “equality.” While equality can be achieved by distributing resources identically to all workers across all platforms, equity recognizes that in order to achieve a truly just society, resources must be distributed commensurate with need. Practitioners developing programs must recognize that workers competeing on the same career ladders start from inherently different positions, with different resources, support, or connections.

“Diversity” is an important term to consider as well. These case studies demonstrate that diversity helps achieve equity even as it helps practitioners gain a more dynamic and effective understanding of human capital. We call for a diversity that utilizes workers’ varied experiences (and the understandings of culture, language abilities, and even topographical knowledge that come with these experiences) as an added asset that would otherwise not exist. Diversity is an important tool that helps support the pursuit of equity, but it should not function as a standalone goal. If a worker population is diverse, it is not necessarily also equitable. Diversity can be a means to an equitable end, but it is not a solution in and of itself.

Lessons Learned from the Equity in Apprenticeship Cases

Equity in apprenticeship is forged in three unique areas.

1. Program

Equity in apprenticeship is forged in programs. These model programs build equity into all aspects of design, implementation, and improvement. They locate strengths in diverse workers, and leverage and build on those strengths. They target jobs offering strong wages to workers at the apprentice and journey level, and at every step in between. Programs are where equity in apprenticeship is designed and planned.

2. People

Equity in apprenticeship draws directly from people: the visionary leaders, managers, and workers who use their own position to build and extend opportunity. In these cases, we observed leadership committed to strengthening partners’—especially workers’— ownership and influence in programs. Consistently across these cases, work is designed to strengthen worker voices, meaningfully engage actors in solving problems, and extend power to new and different groups of people. Each case study provides evidence and examples of how the equity focus in program design is made real by people’s everyday practice of partnership and leadership.

3. Policy

Equity in apprenticeship flourishes when policy supports programs and people that carry out the work of equity. Equitable apprenticeships are forged in a context of broader work responding to community and industry needs. Public and private funders and policy makers that see equity as central to apprenticeship should consider context, not just program design. Each of these models grew in a context of ongoing and long-term work with industry and community in order to make equity in apprenticeship real.

These three aspects of equity are facets of an approach rather than unique elements of succes. Their close relationship is evident in each case we profile – program reflects policy frameworks and personal leadership; leadership reimagines program and policy. Apprenticeship becomes a force for equity when all three areas – program, people, and policy – are aligned to extend skills to diverse, disadvantaged, and non-traditional workers.

No matter what your role is within an apprenticeship program, whether a program designer, a funder, an employer, or an apprentice yourself, we hope that our recommendations are actionable ideas that can be applied to your work right away.

Equity in Apprenticeship: Program Design Principles

Equity is a Foundational Priority and Impacts all Aspects of Program

Achieving equity through apprenticeships requires the full integration of equity into all aspects of the program. Our cases demonstrate that success comes when apprenticeships are as equity-driven as they are demand-driven. That apprenticeships need to be demand-driven is, perhaps, obvious: apprenticeship will go nowhere without industry buy-in, and the direct connection between work and learning in apprenticeship makes industry connections essential to success. In addition to the demand focus, each of the model programs are also simultaneously focused on equity as a guiding principle and a foundational value. These programs are not designed with the employer in mind first and then repurposed or slightly tweaked into a “special class” for a subset of workers. This is not apprenticeship first, and equity second. Equity is a co-equal and foundational priority from inception.

The Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership/BIG STEP (WRTP/BIG STEP), which created the Industry Manufacturing Technician Registered Apprenticeship, calls itself “Industry Led, Worker Centered, Community Focused.” For WRTP/BIG STEP each principle has equal focus: they work with labor and management leaders to meet industry skill needs while building connections to and opportunity for the central city community. Their success owes to the deep understanding of industry need and their simultaneous attention to the many workers in manufacturing—people of color and women —who historically have not had a pathway to greater skill. They are attentive to and informed by these workers’ needs at every stage of program development, from the structure of training for apprentices on the job and outside of work, to the recruitment and support of apprentices.

When employers prioritize equity, the aligment between industry need and community needs is even more direct. Considering transit work in California’s South Bay, project leader Deborah Moy notes: "Our whole mission is to be equitable. Transit promotes equity in the community by providing a way for people to access opportunity. Extend that to our own workers, with all of transit operations being diverse and with jobs that provide a family-sustaining wage, full benefits, and a career.”

In Montana, apprenticeship development is still relatively new, but the Tribal Colleges demonstrate the same coequal attention to equity and industry demand as the other case studies presented here. The State of Montana, USA Funds, and the Tribal Colleges together are working on programs that will elevate the employment prospects of Indians and military veterans enrolled in the three Tribal Colleges. With equity as a central concern, the Colleges are using their connections to employers to create apprenticeships in high-demand fields such as IT, nursing, emergency medicine, and welding.

Race, Place, and Lived Experience as Assets

These model programs also extend equity through apprenticeship by identifying, developing,a and leveraging the strengths of diverse apprentices.

Health care apprenticeships in Los Angeles provide the clearest example of this program principle. In these apprenticeships, the very attributes that are commonly considered barriers to employment are recognized and utilized as real, tangible assets. The program has capitalized apprentices’ knowledge of and legitimacy in specific neighborhoods, fluency in languages other than English, and their lived experience of having, or caring for someone who has, a chronic condition or disability. These attributes, so often viewed negatively, are strengths in the WERC apprenticeship. WERC apprentices develop their occupational skills on the foundation of experiential knowledge and understanding of the trauma faced by patients in the healthcare system.

This is a radical approach. WERC’s program recognizes apprentices’ socio-economic and cultural backgrounds as relevant capital—capital generated in specific places and specific populations. Race, disability, gender identity and/or expression, sexuality and socioeconomic status are considered, and cultural understanding of and affinity for the patient population becomes an advantage. With this re-imagined understanding of capital, the program is able to place apprentices in environments where their unique experiences can enhance their ability to connect.

Our other cases also leverage the strengths and unique position of diverse workers in their apprenticeship programs. Mentors are drawn from the pool of successful apprentices and provide ongoing direct support to new apprentices. Apprentices enthused about their experience recruit colleagues and friends into the program, ensuring that diversity in one cohort spills into the next. Apprentices provide information on what is working and programs learn and adjust to ensure that the program is refined as it moves forward. In these ways, all the programs have not only supported diverse workers, but also seized on and developed the voices and leadership of diverse workers in the apprenticeship program design.

Job Quality is Essential to Equity

In all of our case studies, apprenticeship programs are being built to provide access to family supporting jobs. Each project takes special care to ensure that their apprenticeship is designed with a career –not just a job—in mind. Job quality is an essential aspect of equity in apprenticeship – securing access for disadvantaged workers to low-wage jobs undermines both the skill and equity promise of apprenticeship. When wages are low, investment in apprenticeship is too easily lost through turnover. For employer, for workers, and for equity itself, apprenticeship works best when it is connecting to good jobs.

Equity in Apprenticeship: Principles for People

Extending Power

Each of our cases offer powerful evidence that the redistribution and sharing of power is critical to driving equity in apprenticeship. Apprenticeship programs must foster an environment that builds partnership and collaboration around the unique perspective of key actors – from designer to employer to workers to apprentices. Strong communication and a real sense of value for diverse perspectives are essential to success.

This is most clear in the intentional and active inclusion of workers in the design and implementation of apprenticeship programs. Worker engagement and contribution only happens in the context of leadership that values and develops engagement and contribution. This creates apprenticeship programs that are informed by real worker experiences, needs, and insight, and ultimately leads to programs that are more effective at preparing workers for their industries, thereby improving industry outcomes and productivity.

In California’s South Bay, the Joint Workforce Initiative’s origin story exemplifies how sharing power and collaboration across sectors drives equity forward. This nationally recognized infrastructure of transit apprenticeship programs began with a single idea: What if workers and management came together to better meet the transit needs of Silicon Valley’s booming population? After a facilitated process of frontline research and joint meetings of labor and management, the Valley Transit Authority and the Amalgamated Transit Union (which represents VTA bus operators) codified their partnership as the Joint Workforce Investment (JWI). Guided by three core principles – Career Development, Public Service, and Workplace Solutions – JWI seeks to build a healthy work environment for all employees while enhancing the quality of service they deliver to the public. To best address the needs of bus operators, JWI agreed “to operate according to a worker-to-worker principle . . . all curriculum would be developed by workers themselves under the guidance and support of the program developer ─ in alignment, of course, with VTA policies and procedures.” This lateral leadership has resulted in a bespoke model of apprenticeship that is highly adapted to the needs of new bus operators entering the field. The training offered through the program is as specific as the environment in which apprentices work.

In the case of the manufacturing in Milwaukee, employer and worker representatives both engage in the process of aligning the Industrial Manufacturing Technician (IMT) apprenticeship to shopfloor needs. Once an employer sees that the IMT responds to their skills need, they must be ready and willing to fully participate in the program. But employer investment alone cannot drive the outcomes. Workers and their unions are critical partners in program design.

In each of our cases, equity is the result of shared leadership and shared commitment to apprenticeship. The people connected with programs consistently embrace a lateral leadership style that builds the partnership and trust and extends opportunity and meaningful engagement at every level of program. Unions have been a central force in making such leadership possible. The infrastructure provided by unions is functional in that it creates infrastructure for partnership with employers as well as independent ways to engage workers and extend to them power in the design of a program.

Community-Based Recruitment and Mentorship

A common thread among the Equity in Apprenticeship case studies is each program’s ties to community networks that both expands access for underrepresented workers to high-skill jobs and creates a culture of support and mentorship between more experienced workers and newly appointed apprentices. This is an example of the critical role that apprentices, former apprentices, and workers themselves are playing in equity in apprenticeship programs.

In transit in the South Bay, strong ties to the greater community are a longstanding legacy of Valley Transit Authority. The first waves of diverse employees in the 1980s created a conduit for ongoing diversity, as workers encouraged friends and family members to join the agency. Current workers serve as outreach and recruitment conduits, securing diverse entrants to entry-level jobs as well.

Apprentices and workers themselves play a critical role in bringing other underrepresented candidates into future cohorts in other model programs, too. In health care in LA, WERC’s strategy to recruit through existing community networks was effective: every apprentice selected for the program learned of it through word-of-mouth or an ally organization.

In Milwaukee’s manufacturing sector, IMT apprentices share their experiences with friends and family as they learn new skills and take advantage of new opportunities. They have been an essential recruitment tool for future apprentices. Over time, the diversity of IMT journey-level workers will help increase the diversity in more intensive (and traditional) industrial apprenticeships.

Workers, both at the apprentice level and longer-term, are key leaders for equity in apprenticeship. There is great power in worker representation to drive equity forward. When workers see people who look like them, have similar backgrounds and experiences, or share cultural affinities advancing in their fields, they see career advancement as a possibility for themselves.

Equity in Apprenticeship: Policy Principles

Investment in Equity

Policy and funding from both public and private sources have been essential in each of our model cases. The most obvious investment is the federal investment in apprenticeship that enabled these groups to build new apprenticeships around the coequal demands of industry and equity. These funds have helped these projects directly and indirectly through ancillary infrastructure supporting apprenticeship expansion and equity in apprenticeship.

To secure the promise of equity in apprenticeship, equity must be named as a priority in future public investments. Reflecting on the success of our exemplary cases and considering the uneven approach to equity in apprenticeship, we believe that an explicit preference and priority for equity must be at the forefront of future investments. Future investments in apprenticeship should (1) explicitly prioritize equity as a central goal in the development of new apprenticeships and new programming to connect workers to existing apprenticeships; (2) require applicants to demonstrate that they’ve been successful at building equity into their work in the past; and (3) identify concrete metrics for measuring equity.

It is also clear that apprenticeship for some industries and occupations require greater flexibility in their structure and their resources. This may be especially true in health care, where the allocation of wage subsidies during training must take the overstretched public healthcare safety net systems into account. Flexibility may be important, but “flexibility” should never undermine core apprenticeship concepts: that skills should have concrete pay-off in wages, that workers should be paid a decent wage during their training, and that the journey card which proves their completion of the program has meaning in the broader labor market. These concepts are the core of the apprenticeship infrastructure which ensures that workers gain from the training even as employers do. Protecting workers and protecting public investment in apprenticeship requires that these principles be maintained.

Investment in Infrastructure

Each of our cases demonstrates how a history of experience, relationships, and leadership provide a strong foundation for innovation in equity in apprenticeship. Even before the focus on apprenticeship, demand-driven and equity-driven programming had been central to each of these model programs. Through years of work and partnership, these innovators developed experience, relationships, and skills that transferred directly to their approach to apprenticeship. In our model cases, equity in apprenticeship emerges in a context, not as a single program pursued by a new player.

If we look only at the apprenticeship programs, we neglect the soil in which programs grow: a history of deep and sustained connections to industry and to community.

Public and private funders should be attentive to supporting institutions capable of carrying both industry and equity concerns in their apprenticeship programs. Funders should consider how that commitment has been demonstrated and actualized in other programming in the past. The equity in apprenticeship successes that we have identified have been born by intermediaries that are not limited to the business of building apprenticeship, but that also have a strong standing commitment to the industry and the community.


Driving equity forward in apprenticeship requires robust, multi-year funding for effective demand and equity driven apprenticeships throughout the entire program development process. These funding streams should privilege the hard work of building programs specifically for underrepresented workers in order to address the systemic inequities they face and the subsequent disparities in resources and tools that these groups have access to.

Longer standing investments – from public, private, and philanthropic sources – have been critical to the institutions that nurture these exemplary apprenticeships. Notable here is the considerable commitment of time and money from employer and worker representatives to these projects. In its manufacturing work, WRTP/BIG STEP is led by a steering committee of labor and management leaders in manufacturing and informed by an annual industry needs assessment. Industry leaders commit time to the effort because it generates meaningful response to their needs. The WRTP/BIG STEP staff builds new programs, including apprenticeships, in response to the needs identified in the annual assessment and prioritized by the steering committee. Public resources must identify and leverage existing infrastructure and employer needs. This means that projects that have demonstrated connections and investments of time, or even joint labor/management training funds, are good places to look for new apprenticeship programing. Too often, strong employer and labor union partners miss out on public funding streams. In three of our exemplary cases, joint labor management infrastructure was a key asset driving equity in apprenticeship.

Public and private funders should be attentive to supporting institutions capable of carrying both industry and equity concerns in their apprenticeship programs. Funders should consider how that commitment has been demonstrated and actualized in other programming in the past. The equity in apprenticeship successes that we have identified have been born by intermediaries that are not limited to the business of building apprenticeship, but that also have a strong standing commitment to the industry and the community.


Driving equity forward in apprenticeship requires robust, multi-year funding for effective demand and equity driven apprenticeships throughout the entire program development process. These funding streams should privilege the hard work of building programs specifically for underrepresented workers in order to address the systemic inequities they face and the subsequent disparities in resources and tools that these groups have access to.

Longer standing investments – from public, private, and philanthropic sources – have been critical to the institutions that nurture these exemplary apprenticeships. Notable here is the considerable commitment of time and money from employer and worker representatives to these projects. In its manufacturing work, WRTP/BIG STEP is led by a steering committee of labor and management leaders in manufacturing and informed by an annual industry needs assessment. Industry leaders commit time to the effort because it generates meaningful response to their needs. The WRTP/BIG STEP staff builds new programs, including apprenticeships, in response to the needs identified in the annual assessment and prioritized by the steering committee. Public resources must identify and leverage existing infrastructure and employer needs. This means that projects that have demonstrated connections and investments of time, or even joint labor/management training funds, are good places to look for new apprenticeship programing. Too often, strong employer and labor union partners miss out on public funding streams. In three of our exemplary cases, joint labor management infrastructure was a key asset driving equity in apprenticeship.

Further, new supports for training (especially in healthcare) are critical to program development. The California Endowment and WERC’s partnership provided funding for WERC’s program. L.A. Care, a healthcare provider, played a key role in subsidizing apprentice wages and helped secure participating employers. That approach allowed WERC to prove the concept and engage more employers. Employer-paid training wages are a defining feature of apprenticeship, but smaller organizations often lack the resources to invest initially in a new training and hiring model. Publicly funded, community-based agencies especially benefit from models that increase efficiency; but some funding for wages during training may be critical for further development of equity in apprenticeship in healthcare.

Building an Ecosystem for Equity in Apprenticeship

Further, investment in the broader ecosystem of partnership and program development is essential to provide a supportive context for effective equity in apprenticeship. For each program, funding for this infrastructure is difficult to secure. The three mature cases – in LA, the South Bay, and Milwaukee – have developed strategies to fund their partnership infrastructure. For others who are just starting up, the need is more accute: in Montana, the Tribal Colleges have demonstrated a strong community network, but learning the apprenticeship system is a difficult task. Without investment, apprenticeship programs will be hard pressed to succeed. If equity in apprenticeship is the goal, traditional metrics of “progress” and “success” must be extend to encompass the infrastructure that builds programs from the ground up.

The Health Care Career Advancement Project is a network of labor management training funds in health care and has received DOL funding to promote health care apprenticeship across the nation. They have provided projects with technical and financial support, nurtured a community of practice, developed outreach materials and toolkits. Their work, funded both by the federal government, private philanthropy, and by employer and union partners, stands as a model for its effective promotion and targeted support of equity in apprenticeship.

Recently the State of California Workforce Development Board (CWDB) has made serious long-term investments in partnerships for training around its High Road Training Partnership initiative. Our two California cases receive funds from the initiative. The CWDB is interested in generating greater capacity to solve industry problems in partnerships across the state. This is capital with patience, supporting partnerships that drive for a stronger economy, greater climate resilience, and greater equity for workers. This vision connects to apprenticeship programs – the partnerships are the infrastructure, and apprenticeship is a tool.

Beyond the structure of public investments, it is essential that private and philanthropic sources continue to support and amplify success in equity in apprenticeship. The leadership of local employers, labor unions, donors, and workers should be identified, developed, and disseminated. Networks of practitioners focused on equity and apprenticeship should be cultivated into communities of practice for mutual support and drawing greater attention to the issues.


A model of this community building, the National Skills Coalition’s Apprenticeship Forward Conference was focused on industry demand, equity, and policy. These themes are critical and venues for their development and amplification will be essential to developing equity in apprenticeship in the future.