Trump’s apprentice plan is good for America; it could be even better

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order which is designed to make it easier for businesses and industry groups to create apprenticeship programs. The move could fill thousands of jobs and is potentially a first step to weakening occupational licensing cartels.

Trump’s executive order calls for rerouting funds to learn-to-earn job training programs from other Department of Labor programs. It also calls for the streamlining of 43 workforce programs across three agencies to help free up funding for additional apprenticeship initiatives.

The move is aimed at making easier for industry groups to register employees into apprenticeship programs and broaden the standards under which the Labor Department oversees the programs.

Critics contend that this could weaken oversight, opening the door to “fly by night” training programs.

But supporters of Trump’s plan see the increased focus on apprenticeship initiatives, combined with the administration’s deregulation agenda, as a big step toward eliminating hurdles keeping many Americans stuck in minimum wage jobs.

Making it easier for Americans to enter a new, specialized career while earning money rather than taking on massive student loans could lessen the problem of so many people entering the workforce over-educated and under experienced.

Overall, government regulation over the past several decades has made the labor force less flexible.

Back in 2014, economists Steven Davis and John Haltwanger pointed out how an ever-escalating government regulatory threshold makes entry into the ranks of the employed more difficult than it’s ever been.

From an analysis of their research in The Economist:

Some of this may be down to structural changes in the economy…But less benign forces are also at work. The spread of occupational licensing, for everything from horse massage to hair braiding, has raised barriers to entry for occupations that once required little or no training. American employers used to be free to sack workers more or less as they pleased, but that “employment at will” doctrine has been eroded somewhat by court decisions that have established an implicit contract between employee and employer. That makes firms less likely to fire people, and therefore to hire them. The authors also finger the information revolution: a job applicant these days could be undone by a criminal record, a poor credit history or even an impolitic Facebook posting, all of which are easy to find online.

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