Idea III. Leverage Public Investment and Employment to Support the Growth of Nontraditional Apprenticeship Programs in Critical Sectors

To meet the 500,000-apprentice goal, state policymakers can build on what is already working and extend these principles to support new apprenticeship programs in nontraditional fields. California’s 2019–20 budget allocated $3.5 billion in capital outlays for building, repair, and renovation projects.¹ Since 2016, many of these public projects have supported inclusive employment practices by mandating the use of apprenticeship-trained workers, ensuring that large annual public investments in public works, infrastructure, and government services also support workforce development and economic opportunity.

The state is well positioned to replicate this linkage of public investment to good jobs and career pathways by encouraging further apprenticeship opportunities in fields including information technology, human services, education, and civil service. To complement steps to make the apprenticeship system easier to navigate at the state and local level, public investment can be used to open up access to good jobs in the public and private sector, with a focus on underrepresented workers. New state public contract legislation could provide a boost to nontraditional apprenticeship program growth across a range of fields and realize broader equity objectives, even if hiring requirements for nontraditional apprentices are initially set somewhat lower than those that currently benefit traditional apprenticeship occupations.

Like contractors that carry out public projects, state and local governments themselves are also a source of good jobs for workers across California. Collectively, government agencies employ over 1.5 million full-time workers,² including many in collective bargaining units that do not yet have apprenticeship programs in place. By taking steps to make it easier and more attractive for state and local agencies to develop apprenticeship opportunities alongside sector intermediaries and regional partnerships, Californian policymakers would allow the public sector to lead by example, using apprenticeship to fill new entry level positions and to upskill existing workers into positions that help government services maintain and modernize critical technologies (see Box 4).

Capital outlays are likely to be smaller as the coronavirus economic crisis hits California’s budget. Still, state and local governments will be able to incentivize employment of current and completed nontraditional apprentices, and to use apprenticeship to support high quality public sector jobs as a part of broader economic recovery efforts. Taking steps today to lay the groundwork for better use of the state’s authority and its own workforce to drive apprenticeship expansion will pay dividends for years to come, helping address retirements and meeting California’s critical public health and digital infrastructure needs.

A combination of new and existing authorities can allow state policymakers to use public spending and employment to better serve California’s workers. These include policy opportunities that:

• Extend public apprenticeship incentives to nontraditional fields through alignment with procurement and broader public investment priorities. To drive the adoption of apprenticeship in new critical fields, such as information technology, public health, and education, the state can integrate apprenticeship as a workforce requirement or incentive across a range of public investments. This could include legislation that extends existing Skilled and Trained Workforce requirements of the Public Contract Code for apprenticeship programs to also reach nontraditional occupations. In the near term, the governor could direct the Department of General Services to inventory all service contractors that were in receipt of at least $3 million in state funds during fiscal year 2019–20 and, in partnership with IACA and DAS, to identify opportunities for engaging these entities in apprenticeships expansion efforts.
• Review potential barriers and identify priority opportunities for the development of civil service apprenticeship pathways. The governor could initiate an interagency review panel to identify barriers to civil service apprenticeships related to workforce classification, licensure, or other statutes. The state could additionally conduct a survey of agencies to evaluate which jobs have the highest vacancy rates or are most likely to be impacted by changes in technology. By partnering with IACA’s civil service subcommittee, MITCs could be developed for these occupations and transmitted to the leadership of CalHR for dissemination to relevant sponsoring state agencies, along with new directives and goals for using apprenticeship as both an initial hire and incumbent upskilling strategy.
• Partner with county and local governments to develop an ecosystem of civil service apprenticeship opportunities in critical fields. Replicating the state-level interagency review and guidance for civil service apprenticeship pathways, the governor could direct IACA to survey county and local government human resources departments to identify shared in-demand occupations to target for the development of MITCs. This review could be used to add to the standards inventory described under Idea One, and to set goals that support new apprenticeship program development in critical fields such as information technology, health and human services, financial and public administration, and education.