Apprenticeship in the United States: Labor Market Forces and Social Policy

This article is concerned with the extent to which the apprenticeship program responds to short-run changes in the U.S. economy. Mr. Farber shows that the number of new apprenticeship registrants varies inversely with the level of unemployment in the economy as a whole. The apprentice-completion rate, however, varies directly with the level of unemployment, inversely with changes in inter-industry mobility, and in the case of construction apprentices, directly with wage differentials between skilled and semi-skilled workers. These relationships suggest that participation in apprenticeship does respond to changes in the economy, and that the role of labor unions in apprenticeship may have been over-stated. The author questions the general concern with apprentice dropout rates. An ideal completion rate is presumably one which satisfies precisely present and projected demand for skilled workers. A fair assessment of whether dropout rates are too high requires the construction of accurate projections of demand, the difficulties of which are numerous. In discussing Mr. Farber's paper, Mr. Belitsky is critical of some of his generalizations and suggests that apprenticeship should be both regarded and acted upon more consistently as a form of individual and social investment, while Mr. Barbash enlarges briefly on the nature of unions' interest in apprenticeship.