Background

At a time when the construction industry needs to attract an estimated 439,000 additional workers to meet the demand for labor in 2025 alone, attracting employees remains one of the industry’s greatest challenges. Even with growth in career technical education and apprenticeship programs, continued support and access to these programs is essential to equipping new and existing workers with durable and transferable skills to expand their opportunities to enter rewarding, lifelong careers.

ABC’s analysis of government data indicates that government-registered apprenticeship programs are struggling to meet the construction industry’s workforce needs, with just under 250,000 apprentice participants in fiscal year 2025 and approximately 40,000 graduates in FY 2024. This data suggests it would take nearly 11 years for all federal and state construction industry government-registered apprenticeship programs to educate the 439,000 workers that the construction industry needs to hire just in 2025.

Unfortunately, the complexity, paperwork burdens and compliance costs associated with GRAPs often deter small businesses from participating in such programs. In addition, the threat of burdensome regulations, such as the Biden administration’s National Apprenticeship System Enhancements proposed rule, magnify existing disincentives to participate in GRAPs. While the administration withdrew the proposed rule before leaving office, it would have reduced flexibility by replacing competency-based GRAPs with time-based GRAPs, eliminated state governments’ ability to approve apprenticeship programs for new occupations needed to keep up with the modern economy and incorporated dozens of expensive new recordkeeping and administrative requirements. Overall, this rule would have cost the regulated community more than $1.3 billion over the next 10 years, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s own flawed and lowballed regulatory cost analysis.

Further, ABC’s surveys on apprenticeship have found disturbing examples of state government regulators working in tandem with unions to enact polices that needlessly delay or even prohibit nonunion apprenticeship programs from getting approved and prevent contractors from winning contracts to build taxpayer-funded construction projects if they are not participants in union-affiliated GRAPs.

ABC sees the withdrawal of the Biden administration’s apprenticeship proposal as an opportunity for the Trump administration to build a stronger GRAP system for the construction industry that will prioritize developing the workforce needed to complete critical infrastructure projects across the nation.

Desired Outcome

ABC supports maximizing opportunities for hardworking Americans to enter the construction industry with the skills and resources they need. By supporting the expansion of the Pell Grant program to apply to workforce programs and advocating on behalf of industry recognized apprenticeship programs, ABC is paving the way for more workers to benefit from careers in the construction industry.

ABC and its 67 chapters continue to work toward meeting America’s infrastructure demands and upskilling the workforce by providing more than 450 GRAPs in over 20 construction industry trades, such as electrical, plumbing, carpentry, HVAC, welding and more. Notably, none of ABC’s chapter GRAPs are affiliated with unions. ABC supports providing access to all individuals interested in joining the industry, regardless of labor affiliation.