What Does It Take to Build High-Quality Youth Apprenticeships?

For the past six years, PAYA has invested in place-based partnerships launching and running youth apprenticeship programs aligned to PAYA’s Definition and Principles for High-Quality Youth Apprenticeship. During our third and most recent round of grantmaking, which ran from 2023 through 2024, PAYA made grants to 14 partnerships across 13 states.

As the latest grant period concluded, we collected data and reflections from grantees that capture their major milestones and lessons learned, as well as the opportunities they see for growth and frequently encountered hurdles. These reflections provide a nuanced understanding of many complex factors that can impact the development of youth apprenticeship programs — like partnership dynamics, program structures, and state policy contexts — and they offer the field a snapshot of the state of youth apprenticeship right now.

Below we share five major findings from our grantees’ reflections on the successes and challenges of launching, running, and sustaining youth apprenticeship partnerships.

Data suggests that intentionally designing apprenticeship programs to serve youth can lead to more equitable outcomes.

PAYA grantees reported promising figures around apprentice enrollment and completion that have potentially significant implications for equity in youth apprenticeship. We found that in 2024, PAYA grantees enrolled a higher share of Black apprentices (14 percent) [1] and a higher share of female apprentices (28 percent) compared to the U.S. Registered Apprenticeship (RA) system, where less than eight percent of apprentices are Black and 13 percent are female. Similarly, the completion rate for apprentices in PAYA grantee programs (76.5 percent) is more than double the completion rate of the RA system overall.

Together, these numbers suggest that when apprenticeship programs are intentionally designed to meet the specific needs of young people, they can produce stronger equity outcomes for participants traditionally underrepresented in the RA system. PAYA grantee programs have also committed to aligning their programs with PAYA’s definition of and quality principles for youth apprenticeship (and have largely done so). Alignment with PAYA’s definition and principles allows youth apprenticeship programs to better meet the unique needs of young people as they enter the workforce for the first time and transition out of high school. For example, PAYA-aligned programs often include supports like career and academic advising and transportation assistance, and are designed to expand, rather than limit, the apprentice’s postsecondary options by providing college credit for related instruction coursework. (Related instruction refers to the academic, classroom-based portion of an apprenticeship.)

As their programs mature, grantees have grown their youth apprenticeship enrollment and built more sophisticated partnerships.

In 2024, PAYA grantees collectively posted their highest-ever number of participants, career pathways offered, and partners, representing growth across all three categories. Steadily increasing enrollment reflects a cultural shift in the perception of youth apprenticeship. In PAYA grantee communities, more young people, and their families, see youth apprenticeship as an appealing and valuable postsecondary option that provides a career and academic head-start for many types of students in a range of industries, including (but not limited to) health care, finance, business operations, IT, and the skilled trades. Indeed, earning a spot as a youth apprentice in PAYA grantee programs is often competitive — and participation is generally not limited by a lack of student enthusiasm, but by too few employers to accommodate all interested applicants. (More on this below.)

Though employer engagement remains a common challenge, PAYA grantees have still expanded the number of employer and non-employer partners alike. As grantees have learned what works, and what doesn’t, in developing and sustaining partnerships, they have adapted their practices and implemented new ones that have paved the way for more sophisticated, nimble, and cohesive partnerships.

For example, PAYA grantees reported that in 2023 and 2024 they streamlined communication practices and built systems for shared learning across partners. One grantee established protocols and procedures to clearly identify and communicate among partners what aspects of apprentice support they were responsible for. Another established a new evaluation tool that has not only improved their data collection practices but also deepened their employer partner relationships and helped ensure a strong alignment between apprentice development and workplace needs. These improvements to cross-partner collaboration have allowed partners to develop a shared vision and goals and strengthened the state of apprenticeship locally.

Grantees are enhancing tailored supports to ensure apprentices succeed.

To be successful, youth apprenticeship programs must be designed to serve young people and meet their specific needs. Without these tailored supports, participants may struggle to complete their apprenticeship. Recognizing this reality, PAYA grantees are consistently implementing new practices and tools to ensure youth have the resources they need to succeed. Grantees report the creation of new staff positions focused on providing individualized support to apprentices. They also continue to offer and expand wrap-around services like transportation and childcare. To ensure continuous improvement, grantees have deployed new evaluation tools to better incorporate participant and partner feedback and insights.

Misalignments between program needs and existing structures hampered progress.

Youth apprenticeship requires the high schools, community colleges, employers, and other community partners to work together in ways they haven’t before. In other words, it asks for flexibility and integration from traditionally rigid, separate education and workforce systems. PAYA grantees report pain points in trying to bridge the gap between what their program and participants need and what the existing structures and systems can offer.

Most notably, this occurs when trying to bridge the secondary and post-secondary education systems so that youth apprentices can earn college credit through their related instruction coursework. Sometimes, PAYA grantees have successfully worked with high school partners to grant secondary credit, but do not yet have a relationship with the local community college or only have a relationship with some departments. In other instances, especially in rural communities, schools lack instructors who can teach dual credit courses. Of the four elements of PAYA’s youth apprenticeship definition, PAYA grantee programs are least likely to be in alignment with the element that requires apprentices earn transferable post-secondary credit.

This finding is not news, but it does highlight the need for states to break down silos between the education and apprenticeship systems in order to better support high-quality career pathways for young people, like youth apprenticeship.

Securing employer commitments remains a universal challenge.

In the fall of 2023, when we last reported on the PAYA grantees’ reflections, we noted that programs need “resources and strategies to recruit employers.” That remains true today: nearly all PAYA grantees have encountered hurdles securing employer participation. Grantees reported that employers are turned off by the lack of common industry-designed standards or don’t have the staff capacity to support an apprentice. In some cases, employers express initial interest in youth apprenticeship, but never take tangible steps forward towards establishing apprenticeship in their workplace.

Youth apprenticeship requires employers to shift their mindset and practices from consumers of talent to co-developers of it. And when they do, employers can be some of the most powerful champions of youth apprenticeship, especially in bringing in fellow employers. But cracking that code, especially at scale, has proven elusive, and represents a significant area of growth for the field.

It takes creativity, commitment, and flexibility to build a high-quality youth apprenticeship. These lessons from our PAYA grantees help inform the evolution of this work, and PAYA will continue to support programs in tackling these challenges through our upcoming fourth round of grantmaking. Stay tuned for an announcement in the coming weeks regarding our next cohort of grantees. PAYA also provides technical assistance and peer learning opportunities to our Network members and grantees to build knowledge and best practices across the field. To stay up to date on PAYA’s programming and offerings, please subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

[1] We cannot compare Hispanic/Latino participation due to differences in collection practices.