Trends in Youth-focused Programs

Early work experience and postsecondary education, including employer-provided training, cannot guarantee economic security but remain key predictors of success in adulthood.¹ The results of the Employer Training Survey show that employers may implement different types of training programs and quality assurance when they train youth, and suggest that providers of youth-focused training programs are particularly interested in meeting long-term skills needs by recruiting from local communities.

ETS respondents provided data about the target age group or age groups of 1,631 training programs: 499 programs exclusively targeted youth up to age 24; 512 programs targeted youth as well as other age groups; and 620 programs did not train youth.²

The two most popular types of youth-focused training were apprenticeship and internship, representing 33 percent and 39 percent of all reported youth-focused programs, respectively. At 23 percent of reported youth-focused programs, on-the-job training was also relatively common among ETS respondents with youth programs. However, professional development was very uncommon, accounting for only 2 percent of youth programs, compared to 41 percent of programs that targeted any age group.

The prevalence of apprenticeships among youth-focused programs reported by ETS respondents results from the survey’s dissemination through the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship Network and the large number of responses—289 out of 682—received from Wisconsin employers. Although youth apprenticeships remain relatively rare in the U.S., Wisconsin has a formal statewide youth apprenticeship system with nearly 4,000 participating employers and over 5,000 active participants, making it the largest youth apprenticeship system in the country.³

The overrepresentation of youth apprenticeship providers among ETS respondents suggests that the mix of youth programs reflected in the survey does not accurately reflect national trends. Apprenticeship training, with its much longer duration, higher intensity and rigor, and greater external oversight, is still uncommon among American employers interested in training youth.⁴ However, the dataset does provide valuable insight into the motivations of youth training providers, and the types of credentials and quality control they implement in their training programs.

Regardless of whether or not their training programs focused on youth, employers represented in the ETS dataset were concerned by employees’ skills levels. They were only satisfied with new hires’ initial skill levels about 57 percent of the time, and they were most likely to invest in training because they felt it was the “best way to get the right skills.” Employers were particularly unimpressed with new hires’ advanced technical skills and advanced conceptual skills, with only 52 percent reporting that employees met or exceeded skills needs in each category. The average employer reported an average period of 24 weeks required for new hires to reach full productivity, with some reporting a year or more spent on training. Perhaps unsurprisingly, employers rated internal hiring and promotion as their most important talent strategy.

ETS responses showed the extent to which specific concerns about skills factor into employers’ decisions to provide youth training. ETS respondents who provided youth-focused training saw local hiring and employee retention as more important justifications for training than respondents who did not train youth. Building a diverse workforce and reducing recruitment costs may be more important to businesses providing youth-focused training, but evidence from ETH Zürich's analyses was not conclusive on these points. Concerns about retirement, recruit screening, dissatisfaction with college graduates, and a preference for skills-based hiring were not significantly more important to employers with youth-focused programs versus those without. For surveyed employers, then, the decision to include youth in their training programs appears to have more to do with hiring local, loyal workers than with any particular skills needs.

Youth-focused programs in the ETS differed from other employer-provided training types in the benefits they confer to participants, and in the quality-assurance features employers use to make sure training programs work as intended.

Across all types of employer-provided training programs reported in ETS responses, 62 percent conferred external credentials and 60 percent conferred company-specific credentials. Occupational licenses were the next most common benefit, seen in 46 percent of programs, while 44 percent of training programs resulted in postsecondary credit. In youth-focused programs, both external credentials and occupational licenses were significantly less common. Postsecondary credentials were not significantly more often conferred in programs that included youth among their target age groups.

In terms of program quality, most employer-provided training programs seen in the ETS dataset pay wages, have trained mentors, and feature purpose-built curricula, whether internally or externally developed. Youth-focused programs tend to conform to these general characteristics, with the exception of formal quality control systems. Among ETS respondents, quality control measures were found to be significantly less common for youth-focused programs than for all programs. However, this finding may result from respondents’ different interpretations of survey items about quality control. Wisconsin’s youth apprenticeships, in particular, are subject to oversight by state as well as sectoral authorities, but respondents may not have considered these measures to be a form of accreditation, the term used in the survey.

The picture painted of youth-focused employer training by ETS data is heavily influenced by Wisconsin’s youth apprenticeships, which are more widespread than in other states. Even taking this into account, however, the data still reflect positive trends in youth-focused employer-provided training. Most programs are paid, confer portable credentials or credit, and are built on skilled mentorship and dedicated training plans. Although most states do not yet have a youth training infrastructure like Wisconsin’s, the ETS shows that many employers are willing to make investments to provide rigorous, educationally valuable training to youth, and suggests that employers who train youth may be more attentive than others to their organizations’ diversity and the economic success of their communities.