Delivering Skills: Apprenticeship Program Sponsorship and Transition from Training

Abstract

Many open‐shop contractors in the U.S. construction sector sponsor training cooperatively in unilateral multi‐employer apprenticeship programs. Their proponents view these coordinated efforts as an alternative to the training organized jointly by a union and signatory contactors. This paper uses a new data set to compare the performance of these program types in terms of the transition probabilities and durations of apprentices. It shows that in open‐shop multiple‐employer programs: (1) the completion rate is higher but still lags behind that of the union‐management programs; (2) quitters leave training before substantial build‐up of skills; (3) graduates complete requirements at a faster pace. While these results are disconcerting in view of the skilled labor shortage in construction, they are consistent with the open‐shop sector's preference to rely extensively on semi‐skilled workers.