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The real gap is year one
The year-one gap
Picture a small machine shop that supplies Boeing and can't hire any old hands, because they no longer exist. The local college runs a machining class, and runs it well. Unless the shop is highly automated, a graduate still needs about a year on the job to be productive.
Why shops hesitate
The owner can't afford a year of an unproductive worker, and any apprenticeship gets stolen the following year by a company that pays more. So small business owners hesitate to train kids at all. That's the market, and it's nobody's fault.
A possible fix
It works like law: a law degree is followed by four years as a junior lawyer, and manufacturing has no version of that. The trade schools are competent and the certifications aren't too crazy. One fix is to refund every small business owner for the first 18 months of a trade school graduate's pay, because the real training happens in those first 12 to 18 months on the job.
Why did apprenticeships last seven years historically?
In England, the Statute of Artificers of 1563 required apprenticeships in many trades to last seven years. Guilds had enforced similar terms earlier, tying apprentices to a master who housed, fed, and trained them. In return, the master got years of low-cost labor, which paid back the cost of training. The seven-year term stayed in English law until 1814.
Why do firms underinvest in training workers?
Economist Gary Becker argued in his 1964 book Human Capital that firms have little reason to pay for general skills that a worker can carry to any employer. A competitor can hire the trained worker at a higher wage without paying for the training. Firms therefore tend to pay only for skills specific to their own operations. Becker won the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics for work that included this analysis.
How does Germany share apprenticeship costs?
Germany's dual system splits an apprentice's week between a company and a vocational school. The employer pays the apprentice a wage, and a chamber of commerce or craft chamber certifies the result. Because every employer in a trade follows the same national training standard, a certified apprentice's skills transfer between firms. Programs run from two to three and a half years depending on the trade.
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