Let’s Talk… Apprenticeships
NextGen’s Commitment to Breaking Down Barriers to California Careers
February 14, 2025
A single parent enrolls in a fast, flexible certificate program to boost their skills and income. A veteran returning home begins an earn-and-learn pathway toward a lifelong career. A high school student engages firsthand with industry professionals on a real worksite. Each of these avenues represents a type of apprenticeship program and there are thousands of Californians seeking career opportunities through apprenticeships. Key members of the NextGen Policy team are focused on and committed to making these vital programs and their designated public funding more accessible and targeted.
Despite California’s role as an international economic powerhouse, our workforce is experiencing substantial challenges that need to be addressed. We’re facing an aging population that is retiring from the labor force, which means a declining pool of skilled workers across all industry sectors. California also has a serious workforce shortage with more than one million unfilled job openings. This labor shortage will only become more pronounced as demand for skilled workers increases across the state’s various labor markets, driven by the intensifying need to construct more housing, the growing transition to a clean energy economy, and the continuing boom in the tech industry.
NextGen is not alone in advocating for increasing the number of apprenticeships as the solution to this looming workforce crisis, but our mission extends beyond just achieving the 500,000 apprentices goal by 2029 as directed by Governor Newsom. Our goal is to reach Californians that have been historically locked out of these opportunities and face countless barriers to family-sustaining careers, including displaced workers in our rural areas and low-income communities.
California’s Job Situation: Room for Growth
California is the fifth largest economy in the world, with a vast array of industry sectors – tech, entertainment, manufacturing, agriculture, and much more. Despite our macro-level success, when we zoom in on the True Rate of Unemployment in California (a more nuanced measurement than the general unemployment rate) we find that fewer than half of our adults are working jobs that pay a living wage. In addition, employers are having trouble finding qualified workers, and there are few incentives available for employers to start apprenticeships, especially outside of the trades professions.
Apprenticeships create avenues toward sustainable job opportunities for many communities that have not been traditionally supported by the labor market – for example, unemployment gaps by race and gender suggest designed and persistent structural biases in many of our policies and programs which impedes pathways to opportunity as well as hampers greater diversity in the workforce. Job availability and security is vulnerable to explicit and implicit barriers: underfunded public schools serving predominantly Black and brown communities which often do not offer students exposure to certain career pathways, the justice system involvement of disproportionate numbers of Californians of color which creates barriers to future employment, and the limited access to and availability of specific job training and placement programs in rural and other regions of our state. NextGen is committed to addressing and providing solutions to overcoming these and other persistent barriers that are the real obstacles to equitable job opportunity.
Building on the learnings from developing and implementing various workforce development programs, NextGen aims to expand apprenticeship opportunities across California by streamlining processes and forming a coalition of key partners. Led by NextGen, the coalition will identify policy and budget solutions, drive legislative change, and engage a broad network of supporters, including employers, community-based organizations (CBOs), educational institutions, and workforce agencies.
Key Partnerships
NextGen was awarded a $6 million grant through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Apprenticeship Building America (ABA) program to focus on the creation and expansion of public sector registered apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs. One such partnership under this grant is with the Chef Ann Foundation (CAF), a national organization dedicated to ensuring that school food professionals have the resources they need to provide nutritious, locally sourced, healthy school meals to the millions of California K-12 students.
NextGen is providing political strategy and advocacy support to ensure that the Healthy School Food Pathway (HSFP), a first-of-its-kind program developed by CAF, is fully funded. The program supports workforce readiness for scratch-cooked school food and aims to expand the pipeline for the next generation of school food leaders. Open to anyone, from current school food professionals with years of experience to community members who are interested in entering the field, the program helps all participants develop the cooking and administrative skills needed to run successful K-12 school meal programs.
2025 Initiatives
One of NextGen’s 2025 priorities involves long-term strategies related to funding as well as policy and programmatic changes that will facilitate California’s apprenticeship goals. Our priorities include uplifting the Apprenticeship Innovation Fund, a $135 million program investment designed to develop new and innovative apprenticeship programs. With a total of $95 million already allocated for the program in the past two years, this crucial funding source is set to run out after 2025, threatening the strong progress that the state has made towards reaching the goal of 500,000 apprentices by 2029.
Our initiative seeks to create a more accessible and scalable apprenticeship system – one that better aligns with employer needs and provides more Californians in the less resourced areas of our state – so called forgotten regions – with the skills and support necessary to begin family-sustaining careers. Through strong public-private partnerships and policymaker engagement, our efforts will expand non-traditional apprenticeship programs in high-demand sectors like IT, behavioral health, and human resources.
NextGen’s Commitment
Expanding apprenticeships in California is essential for creating equitable economic opportunities and addressing workforce shortages. With NextGen’s leadership and strong coalition partners, our team is determined to open doors for all Californians, regardless of where you live, your educational status, or your background, while meeting the state’s critical workforce needs.
NextGen has unique relationships with stakeholders and subject-matter experts across varying perspectives from higher education institutions to industry employers in the public and private sectors. Our expertise is not only centered in bringing communities together to find innovative solutions but also finding seats at the table for those voices unheard and underrepresented in previous legislative and statewide funding efforts.
The state legislative session is just heating up so please expect plenty of engagement opportunities in the near future if this issue is of interest to you — sign up for workforce development updates and ways to get involved.
Thanks for reading,
Kami Peer
