Dear Chairman Cassidy and Ranking Member Sanders,
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (“Chamber”) respectfully submits this statement for the record for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s hearing titled “Registered Apprenticeship: Scaling the Workforce for the Future.”
The Chamber strongly supports efforts to strengthen, expand, and modernize Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs) to better align with the needs of today’s dynamic economy and workforce. We commend the Committee for prioritizing this critical issue.
Registered Apprenticeships have long been a vital pathway for workers to acquire valuable skills through formal learning, on-the-job experiences, and mentorship, while enabling employers to address talent needs by recruiting more broadly within their communities. However, the current system remains overly complex and challenging for employers to navigate. Many of our members report that the registration process is burdensome, time-consuming, and confusing, which discourages new sponsors and limits growth in emerging sectors. Consequently, many companies develop high-quality apprenticeship programs outside the registered system. Addressing these challenges would encourage more companies to establish or expand registered programs.
While employers who successfully establish Registered Apprenticeship Programs often find it easier to amend and expand them, the initial complexity and susceptibility to shifting policy priorities remain significant barriers. A more consistent and streamlined federal policy would empower employers to confidently build on their existing programs and scale them to meet evolving workforce needs.
The challenges are particularly pronounced for employers with a national presence. Navigating overlapping and inconsistent state procedures and requirements often makes scaling these programs costly and inefficient. Improving state reciprocity or incentivizing better state coordination should be a key focus of any effort to modernize apprenticeships. Additionally, other aspects of the current system warrant attention, including overly rigid minimum hours for learning and on-the-job training, promoting more flexible competency-based approaches, adjusting apprentice-to-journeyman ratios to reflect specific occupations (such as those related to health and safety), and streamlining reporting requirements and processes for transmitting program information.
A modernized Registered Apprenticeship system is essential to building a strong, skilled, and adaptable workforce. The Chamber appreciates the Committee’s focus on this issue and is hopeful that today’s hearing marks the beginning of a broader effort to implement these important changes.
Sincerely,
Neil L. Bradley
Executive Vice President, Chief Policy Officer,
and Head of Strategic Advocacy,
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
