More than 10,000 individuals are enrolled in state-registered apprenticeship programs in Oregon for the first time since officials began tracking such numbers, the Bureau of Labor and Industries announced on Tuesday.

Spurred mainly by a strong construction industry, participation in state-registered programs has more than doubled in the past six years from 4,618 in early 2013 to 10,002 in June 2019. Also, diversity is increasing, with the number of women apprentices growing over the same period from 293 to 705 and the number of minority apprentices rising from 683 to 1,979.

“It’s great to see Oregonians from diverse backgrounds choosing this path in record numbers,” Labor Commissioner Val Hoyle stated in a press release. “Registered apprenticeships lead to lots of different careers with family-supporting wages. In an apprenticeship, you’re getting paid to learn. And when you’re done, there’s no student debt.”

BOLI currently certifies and monitors 146 active apprenticeship programs across the state. The largest are programs for carpenters, electricians, plumbers and steamfitters. The two occupations with the greatest growth are carpenter and electrician. This is in line with figures showing roughly 85 percent of all new apprentices over the past three years are working in the construction industry, which this year reached a record number of 113,000 jobs in Oregon, according to BOLI.

The immediate future remains promising in this regard, with some $7.5 billion worth of public construction projects in the pipeline over the next several years.

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Last week was National Apprentice Week in the United States, and it’s an apt recognition of those just starting out in the construction trades.

But how do people get into the trades in the first place?

In recent years, it’s been a haphazard process that normally differs from trade to trade. One common denominator, however, is that the widespread abandonment of promoting the trades as a career option by public schools has, in part, been a key contributor to the ongoing shortage of skilled trades men and women in the industry.

“I’d definitely say there is a lot of work to be done,” said Katrina Cloud, the director of student services and apprenticeships at the Northwest College of Construction in Portland. “A lot of parents help guide that as well, so really the first one who has an opportunity to have an impact is the parent and also the teacher and counselor. So if they know about those options, that this is another viable option without any debt that is incurred to the apprentice.”

The NWCC recently hired new Director of Education James Reyes in part to forge stronger ties between the building industry and the educational sector. Reyes said the proportion of apprentices with college experience or even a degree is much higher than many would assume. He attributes this to the single-minded focus of educators on the college track, largely at the expense of other options for kids who may not be well-suited for an academic environment.

“The average age of apprenticeships is much higher than you think it is,” Reyes said. “There’s a lot who go to community college or maybe university, and they’ll get so far in debt and then they figure out we’re around and they apply. And they realize they’re making more money than they can with a degree. And they don’t find that right out of high school with the college track.”

To change that, Reyes and the NWCC are busy forging different types of programming at school districts throughout the metro region. In addition, the college works with pre-apprenticeship programs and non-profit groups to draw new apprentices.

“We align with a number of pre-apprenticeship programs,” said Reyes, who formerly was the lead instructor and trainer at Constructing Hope, a Portland-based pre-apprenticeship program that specializes in working with low-income and formerly incarcerated individuals. “We have schools that interface with our facilities, K-12, and some of them do have vocational training programs.”

In addition to hosting pre-apprenticeship classes for Constructing Hope and Oregon Tradeswomen, the NWCC hosts the Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center’s pre-apprenticeship students and provides instruction. The college also works hand-in-hand with Portland Youth Builders to assist that group with its mission of educating at-risk youth about the possibilities existing in construction and technology.

Reyes said the college also is trying to build stronger ties with Portland Public Schools to bring more vocational training to the state’s largest school district.

The college also jointly offers CTE education in Vancouver’s Evergreen Public Schools district, while bringing high school students from around the metro area directly to the college for instruction through externships.

“They can go into a registered apprenticeship,” Reyes said. “That’s key. You can go to work anywhere, for any company.  That doesn’t mean it has an apprenticeship program, but the goal is to get a skilled labor force out there.”

Exacerbating the industry’s problems in attracting talent is an aging workforce that still is reeling from the loss of hundreds of thousands of skilled workers in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Overall construction job numbers still have not returned to the glory days of 12 years ago, leaving an ever-increasing proportion of trades workers on the verge of retirement.

“If you look at the stats, in ‘99 about 10 to 12 percent of skilled trades workers were getting retired,” Reyes said. “And now it’s about 25 percent. You have had a doubling as they’ve gotten behind the eight-ball where they weren’t bringing in apprentices for the long term.”

The industry is increasingly looking to women and minority candidates to fill the gap, and with increasing success. This is boosted by public sector hiring regulations that help ensure those candidates find work.

It’s working, Cloud said, boosted by both traditional and social media advertising.

“Most of our programs these days are between 30 and 50 percent minorities,” she said. “We’re doing some really unique things. Everybody is doing social media these days, and we’re trying to relate to millennials, folks of all age ranges. We’re also looking at ways to get people connected with contractors right away; how do we make the needs of both meet?”

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Rochelle Sadler received a birthday gift this year that could not be more fitting for a dedicated tradeswoman.

And true to form, her modesty prevents her from making a big deal out of it.

“I journeyed out on my birthday, on June 25,” said Sadler, who is employed by Jacobs Heating & Air Conditioning as a sheet metal technician. “I finally accomplished something by age 30, whether it’s a huge accomplishment or not.”

Earning journey status in any trade is a big deal. But not only did Sadler reach a milestone in own her career, in earning that distinction she also became the first African-American woman ever in Oregon to reach that status in the sheet metal trade.

“I feel proud. It’s a stupid word, but I do know the history of black people in the trades and how they fought to be even welders,” Sadler said. “They put black people through the gauntlet; just the history, the fight that was fought to even do the worst jobs, I guess this is the result of that.”

Sara Brady is the director of apprenticeships for the Portland-based Associated Builders and Contractors‘ Pacific Northwest Chapter. She watched firsthand as Sadler earned her journey card the old-fashioned way through the ABC’s sheet metal apprenticeship program.

“She’s amazing,” Brady said. “She struggled at first, and it was hard. She had a lot of life happen, and she worked harder than a lot of people I’ve seen go through her apprenticeship.”

Sadler’s journey began over five years ago, back in the days when she was struggling to get by each month. She was receiving public benefits, including food stamps, and had no idea where to turn for a fulfilling work experience, let alone a career.

“I was on food stamps, so they make you go to the job center,” she said. “I didn’t know what skills I had, and I jokingly said I wanted to be an electrician.”

That offhand remark ultimately led her to discover Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. and that group’s pre-apprenticeship course for prospective trade workers.

“I went through the pre-apprenticeship program and I essentially chose sheet metal because all the other women were choosing carpentry,” she said. “I thought I’d go off the beaten path, but honestly, I didn’t know what sheet metal was.”

After not working steadily for the past three years, however, the idea of an apprenticeship had a strong appeal for Sadler. And after moving to Oregon from St. Paul, Minnesota, she needed to make her own way in the world.

“I didn’t even know what an apprenticeship was,” she said. “I didn’t even know this is how things work, and I wish they’d introduce this to the schools more because parents aren’t teaching.”

James Reyes, the new director of education at the Northwest College of Construction, said Sadler’s experience is not unusual among those who are attracted to the college’s various apprenticeship programs.

“The average age of people in our apprenticeships is much higher than you think it is,” Reyes said. “There are a lot who go to community college or maybe to university, and they’ll get so far in debt before they figure out we’re around and they apply. And once they do they realize they’re making more money than they can with a degree. They don’t find that right out of high school with the college track.”

Sadler’s own experience sticks with her, mainly because it mirrors Reyes’ description.

“My dad always told me to become a doctor, but he didn’t lay out the plan of how I’m supposed to do that,” she said. “And that angers me, because how else would I know how to do it? So, I guess just even seeing women doing sheet metal or whatever, I think that lets people know it’s possible.”

Katrina Cloud, director of student services and apprenticeships at the Northwest College of Construction, said there are two main things the industry can do to help move its recruitment efforts out of the current paradigm.

“One is definitely getting the high school counselors and teachers involved,” Cloud said. “They’re such good advocates, and that’s on everybody’s radar now. The other half of that is the employment office and WorkSource Oregon.”

Cloud said that the state could greatly increase its efforts to expose job seekers to the trades using WorkSource Oregon, which serves the unemployed.

“It would be great to see some of those folks in places that touch a lot of people to be able to share a wide variety of opportunities with them, including apprenticeships in general,” she said. “A lot of these people who are looking for something just haven’t found the right thing yet.”

Marcy Huxtable, commercial division manager for Jacobs Heating & Air Conditioning, hired Sadler and watched as she finished her apprenticeship through the ABC and Northwest College of Construction. Huxtable is on the ABC’s apprentice board and had already seen what Sadler was capable of.

“I had known her and her name had been kicked around,” Huxtable said. “So she came back and went to work through another company, but she came here and applied and I just really liked her and thought she had the potential. So we encouraged her to come over here and finish her schooling.”

She eventually left Milwaukie firm HVAC Inc., dabbled in architectural sheet metal work and finally joined Jacobs.

Most recently, Sadler and her fellow Jacobs’ employees have been installing heating and air conditioning at the Vancouver Apartments project in Northeast Portland being built by general contractor Marathon Construction Services of Wilsonville. The two-building project features heating and air conditioning ductwork throughout both structures, which has meant a lengthy stay onsite for Jacobs. It has also allowed Marathon site superintendent Jay Coalman to get to know the trade workers swarming his job site.

“She’s a great gal,” Coalman said, describing Sadler’s work as outstanding.

With feedback like that, Sadler’s is likely to generate plenty of momentum as she progresses in her career.

“I like to keep my options open,” she said. “I’m using the job I’m at right now to learn as much as possible.”

Sadler freely admits she also is looking ahead with an eye on advancement.

“My main goal is to get my feet in the mud,” she said. “I know a lot of women who are project managers and they’ve never been in the field and there’s a lot of disconnect there, so I want to eventually get out of the field and into project management.”

The keys to doing just, she added, are personality and communication.

“I think that there are a lot of women who could do the jobs physically,” she said. “But then the personal or relationship aspects of coworkers are where a lot of women fail.”

For Brady, Sadler’s accomplishments are a victory not only for women and minorities, but the power of perseverance.

“We were just excited,” Brady said. “There’s such a push to get women and minorities into the program and she’s such a cool person anyhow and worked so hard to do it, and she did it. She worked hard, she had a take a leave, and a lot of people, when they do that, they don’t come back and finish.”

“I feel like people assume I can’t do it,” Sadler added. “I don’t feel pressure to prove it, but I get irritated; let me show you I can do that.”

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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.

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