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For all the controversy he’s elicited over the past two years, Donald Trump has done one thing right in the eyes of construction industry leaders. And it only involved a flick of the wrist.

The President in June signed an directing departments to prioritize apprenticeship programs. Trump has said he wants to nearly double funding to apprentice programs, to $200 million. Though the order is legally toothless, unions, trade groups and businesses are excited for national focus to aim at the skilled labor shortage. It’s a welcome departure from what’s seen as a college-only mindset in K-12 education – an approach said to be favored by the previous White House occupant.

“We think the executive order is a good start,” said Jimmy Christianson, regulatory counsel for Associated General Contractors of America. “It’s a step in the right direction as far as redirecting people’s attention to the importance of technical and vocational training opportunities. Obviously, that is something that has fallen off the map over the past decades.”

The order came days after Trump endorsed a call from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff to increase America’s apprentice ranks, from 505,000 currently in registered programs (including approximately 100,000 in the military) to 5 million.

There are more construction industry apprenticeship programs registered with the Department of Labor than any other industry, and, despite the skilled labor shortage, these programs are widely regarded as successful in turning out well-trained workers. There’s even talk today of younger industries, like technology, modeling their training programs after building trade programs.

It’s not a surprise to Willy Myers, head of the Columbia-Pacific Building Trades Council. Many American construction unions date to the 1800s. Some in Europe can trace their roots to medieval guilds. Apprentices were on board the Mayflower.

“This is not something that popped up overnight,” Myers said.

The national office, North America’s Building Trades Union, called the executive order a “model of expansion.”

“We commend the administration for elevating and promoting the power of apprenticeship programs for workers and whole industries,” reads a statement released from NABTU.

One potential issue with Trump’s order is that it doesn’t specifically refer to apprenticeships in the construction industry, leaving the AGC and NABTU to disagree about whether this means they are intended to be exempt. The fact that these programs are already successful has some worried that further funding might not be considered essential.

Ready to go

Near the end of his second term, Barack Obama directed $175 million to apprenticeship and education programs during his terms in the White House, a not-insignificant sum, but considering the size of the federal government, and the size of the problem, much more could be done, said Claiborne Guy, AGC’s  director of Employment Policy and Practices.

“When you consider that one four-year apprenticeship costs an employer an average of $250,000, that’s not a whole heck of a lot of training,” Guy said. “I would say Obama’s message for eight years was, everyone needs to go to college. That message, in our opinion, should have been, everyone should have the chance to go to college, and also, be educated in technical and training schools as well.”

Trump’s “Order Expanding Apprenticeships in America” intends to make it easier for third parties like unions and open-shop builders to get their apprenticeship programs licensed by the Department of Labor. But to do it, Trump is proposing pulling money cut from other areas, making it unclear what the cumulative effect of the order, if any, will be.

The AGC’s annual workforce surveys regularly find that as many as two-thirds of AGC’s contractors have difficulty finding qualified skilled help.

The change in tone in the White House is music to the ears of Todd Hess, head of Todd Hess Building Co. Because his firm is open-shop, he directly hires many of the men and women who construct his projects. Hess supports any attention apprenticeship programs can get.

“I think it’s great. Those that are right for construction need to be exposed to the trades early, and apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships are the way to do it,” he said. “I think more portals to construction is always a good thing.”

These days, due to the shortage of skilled craft workers, a brand-new employee who can pass a urinalysis and who also has a driver license is off to a “great start,” Hess said. Other builders will even retain employees who rack up DUI arrests off-hours, or take long spells away from the company.

“We’re looking for any people who are ready to go,” he said.

He said Oregon lags other states in terms of career and technical education for children. As a member of AGC’s Industry Recruiting Task Force, he’s gotten to learn about approaches in other states. Wisconsin, Georgia and Texas have some enviable programs.

Hess and others would like to see high schools in Oregon offer students dual enrollment so they can attend community college apprenticeship programs while still enrolled in high school. Other fast track-style programs seem to push kids towards academia, which critics in the building industry contend offers limited job prospects and a high likelihood of a young person being saddled with deep debt.

Despite builders widely reporting difficulty hiring qualified skilled tradespeople, unions like Ironworks Local 29 say their ranks are full and growing. Forty-seven of the Local’s apprentices recently took their completion exams, with 60 new apprentices signing on – the most ever. The youngest is 20; the oldest is 46.