California’s Newest Investment in Youth Apprenticeship Focuses on Opportunity Youth

In 2018, California Governor Gavin Newsom set a goal of reaching 500,000 active apprentices by 2029. Given its potential to build a more equitable economy and provide opportunities for upward mobility, apprenticeship has become a key tool in California’s workforce development toolbox. Although California’s investments in and policy support for apprenticeship are the most generous and extensive in the country, it has yet to invest substantially in expanding the model to youth — until now.

In July 2022, California’s Division of Apprenticeship Standards (DAS) and the Labor & Workforce Development Agency released a five-point plan of action to aid the expansion of the number of apprentices. Point four called for expanding youth apprenticeship opportunities for in-school and out-of-school youth and recommended the state convene stakeholders to develop definitions and quality standards to support apprenticeship pilots, provide technical assistance, and take steps to support better alignment of state and federal funding. Simultaneously, DAS announced the launch of the California Youth Apprenticeship Committee (CYAC) and the California Youth Apprenticeship Grant Program (CYAG), both created through SB-191. 

The CYAC’s appointees represent youth, youth-serving organizations, labor, employers of youth, K-12 schools, community colleges, and the public workforce system — all stakeholders important for making youth apprenticeship work at scale. The Committee is responsible for developing and defining the terms and conditions of youth and high school apprenticeships, creating a set of principles for the California Youth Apprenticeship Program (CYAG), and providing additional information on the state's efforts to expand apprenticeships. 

The CYAG is the state’s first major investment targeting youth apprenticeship. With $20 million in available funds for FY 2022-2023, CYAG’s purpose is to develop and test innovative practices to increase the participation of opportunity youth in pre-established or developing pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs while also measuring the impact of these programs on the employment and earnings of opportunity youth. Opportunity youth, sometimes referred to as “out of school youth,” are defined as teens and young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor working.

Community-based organizations, local educational agencies, county offices of education, and local intermediaries are among the eligible applicants that can be considered for this initial round of CYAG funding. However, the grant program does not apply to building and construction trades programs that are within the jurisdiction of the California Apprenticeship Council. Selected Grantees will be required to report program data key characteristics, such as the race, gender, and English language learners of participants, to measure success towards California’s goal of ensuring  demographics and student characteristics no longer predict the outcomes of California’s youth. 

CYAG is a historic investment to expand youth participation in California’s apprenticeship system and it could, with the right conditions in place, yield innovative, high-quality pilot programs and provide valuable lessons to inform future policy development. The choice to limit the grants’ focus to programs serving opportunity youth makes sense given the need to provide more, better options to support the economic success of this group of approximately 4.7 million young people.

At the same time, however, it may serve to further confuse the landscape of terminology in California. For starters, the grant is called the California Youth Apprenticeship Grant, but funding will support pre-apprenticeship opportunities. Pre-apprenticeship opportunities can be an effective strategy for reaching opportunity youth, who are typically disconnected from school and from work, and may benefit from extra support and training before entering full apprenticeship programs. But while pre-apprenticeships can serve youth, they are not the same as youth apprenticeships. Youth apprenticeships (YA) can also be funded by this grant, but it is hard to imagine many will be since they are typically designed to leverage CTE coursework as part of related supplemental instruction, which makes it difficult for youth apprenticeships to serve opportunity youth, unless they re-enroll in high school. A youth apprenticeship model that supports re-enrollment would be a great use of CYAG funds, of course, and so it makes sense to fund both models through CYAG. But in that case, it might be more accurate to describe CYAG as a grant to support youth in apprenticeship, rather than a grant to support ‘youth apprenticeship’ specifically, since the CYAC will be defining that term as part of its charge from DAS. (Notably, the federal government might too, via one of many bills surrounding apprenticeships that were recently introduced in the 118th Congress). 

These distinctions may seem pedantic, but they matter greatly for building an apprenticeship system that’s inclusive and efficient. Different apprenticeship models serve different purposes. It’s important that the distinctions are clear to manage apprentice and employers’ expectations and create navigable pathways into and through the system (e.g. from pre-apprenticeship to registered apprenticeship).    

Still, CYAG is an exciting opportunity to make the apprenticeship pathway more visible to young adults in California and to support innovation in how apprenticeship can be designed to provide career pathways for opportunity youth. To maximize the opportunity CYAG presents — for opportunity youth, employers, and for the state’s ambitious apprenticeship expansion goals — New America’s Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship encourages the DAS and the CYAC to: 

• Promote provisional definitions that distinguish clearly between pre-apprenticeship, youth apprenticeship, and registered apprenticeship; 
• Require  applications to position apprenticeship as part of clearly defined career ladder opportunities that can expand options for opportunity youth, drawing on the principles and framework of California’s High Road Framework to promote equity and job quality; 
• Require funded pre-apprenticeship opportunities to connect to  registered apprenticeship programs that provides advantaged or guaranteed entry for pre-apprenticeship completers;    
• Allow funds to support intermediary capacity to coordinate across the many community providers that support opportunity youth and connect them to services that can support their success in apprenticeship; 
• Align data collection for this grant with existing data requirements for other state & federal grant programs serving this student population to reduce the administrative burden on grantees;
• Cooperate with other agencies to provide guidance and technical assistance to leverage supportive services, support braided funding models, streamline data collection and reporting, and pursue other strategies to align existing systems in support of apprentice success.  
• Structure grants to take into account the time it takes to develop new apprenticeship programs and the fact that many programs for youth can take multiple years to complete, especially for those who need more support. 

California continues to be a leading state in supporting the development of registered apprenticeships in the United States. Although the state has preexisting investments, resources, and legislation in support of the expansion of pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs, the CYAG can potentially serve as a new, innovative way to provide opportunity youth with a chance to expand their options for the future  and give them a chance to layer future training as their confidence and skills increase over time.