Apprenticeship joins the digital age
Old machine shops, labor halls and outdated technology. If those are your first thoughts of apprenticeship, it might be time to update your floppy disk. Today, jobs in information technology, aerospace manufacturing and the medical fields also use Registered Apprenticeship (RA) as a career path.
Expanding apprenticeship
These new fields are just part of what makes job-based learning relevant and attractive to today’s career seekers. During the last two years, many agencies and community organizations worked together to increase outreach for youths and adults, improve the process for employers and created new pages on WorkSourceWA.com to tie it all together. Some of the major players were the state Department of Labor and Industries (LNI), Employment Security, the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, Washington State Labor Council, Migrant Health Centers and others.
The project, funded by a RAISE grant from LNI, is very timely because President Donald Trump and Gov. Jay Inslee both recently announced initiatives to grow apprenticeships. Gov. Inslee’s Career Connect Washington initiative and money from the grant have helped expand RA for youth, employers and job-seekers.
Record numbers
Currently, more than 4,500 employers and 180 different occupations participate in RA, including high tech, healthcare, and traditional trades such as electricians, carpenters and ironworkers. Washington now boasts an all-time record of people participating in RA programs: 18,947 as of October 2018.
“Registered Apprenticeship programs combine training in real-world skills with on-the-job experience and classroom education without debt,” said Jody Robbins, manager of LNI’s RA program. “[While RA can take between two and five years to complete], a person can be making more than $70,000 a year only six months after finishing training.”
New website
Employment Security’s role in the project RAISE grant was to create a new internet resource to meet the goals of the grant. Last fall, ESD launched ApprenticeshipWA.com on the state’s WorkSourceWA job-match website. Now career seekers can find an easy-to-read site with step-by-step information to help them get started. It also explains to employers why RA makes sense and provides current apprentices with help during training.
Check it out!
