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In late April U.S, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that directed his secretaries to come up with a blueprint to reach and surpass one million new apprentices each year.

A strategy aimed at building new pipelines of skilled talent for critical industries, including construction, was rolled out in mid-August. One of the pillars involves simplifying registration for new apprenticeship programs and reducing the time it takes to develop new standards.

The initiatives can’t come soon enough for the U.S. construction industry, as statistics show that, at a time when they are most in need, the number of apprentices in the system has declined.

Data in the Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Database (RAPID) System shows 678,014 apprentices in the system in 2025, a decline of 0.16 per cent from the 679,105 a year earlier.

2025 is the first in 10 years that the number of registered apprentices in the system has declined.

This figure continues a trend from 2024. The number of apprentices and trainees in construction fell 12 per cent that year, led by a decline in the carpentry and joiner and plumbing trades.

Adding fuel to the fire, government-registered apprenticeship programs (GRAPs) haven’t scaled up fast enough and are failing to yield enough construction workers to keep up with the severe shortage, according to an analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data by the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a non-profit, non-partisan American research organization.

According to a research paper by RAND, another non-partisan U.S. research organization, plans for new factories, new tech hubs – and even new homes – are about to crash into the fact that not enough people work in construction to turn those plans into hammer-and-nail reality

“That one bottleneck threatens everything from America’s competitive edge in high-tech manufacturing to its exit from a grinding housing crisis,” says a summary posted about the research paper. “The answer may seem simple: Just hire more construction workers. But construction jobs often require four or five years of training in an apprenticeship program. And as researchers found, those programs have not scaled up fast enough to meet the need.”

Marwa AlFakhri, a labour economist and associate policy researcher at RAND, notes the impacts could be substantial.

“The cost to build anything will go up. Housing will get put on the back burner. But we’ll also fail to meet a lot of our benchmarks for new manufacturing and semiconductor facilities. There just aren’t enough people to do the work.”

ABC estimates the projected construction industry workforce shortage will be 439,000 in 2025. The Bureau of Labor Statistics pegged the shortage at 447,00 in 2024 and figures that over the next decade the annual shortage of skilled trades will be close to half a million – and grow as the years go by.

In fiscal year 2024, the construction industry’s federal and state GRAPs had about 290,000 apprentice participants and yielded less than 40,000 completers, according to ABC estimates.

“Unfortunately, America’s government-registered apprenticeship system isn’t keeping up with construction industry demand for skilled craft professionals, despite encouraging progress by many stakeholders to create new programs, attract new apprentices and graduate journeymen and women at the end of a rigorous four-to-five year apprenticeship program,” Ben Brubeck, vice president of regulatory, labour and state affairs at ABC, said in a statement.

He stated that ABC champions GRAPs as part of a diverse, solution to workforce development needs to solve the construction industry’s demand for skilled craft professionals.

Meanwhile, RAND estimates that roughly one in eight high school graduates would have to take up a trade to meet the number of new construction workers required to keep up with demand in 2025 alone.

The problem is compounded, the think tank states, by the fact that around 40 per cent of apprentices drop out before they make it to the end of their training program. Researchers found that as many as half of those who leave programs do so in the first six months of their training.

An article published by The Economic & Labour Relations Review Journal sheds some light on the issue. An analysis of data from the RAPID system showed that more than 40 per cent of apprentices left their programs, while 24.8 per cent completed and 35 per cent were still registered.

Results showed females had significantly higher odds of cancellation than males and, compared to white apprentices, American Indian, Alaska natives, African American, and multi-racial apprentices had significantly higher odds of cancellation, indicating race can affect completions.

The Center for American Progress said in an analysis that instead of weakening apprenticeships, policymakers should invest more in the existing registered apprenticeship system. The analysis focused on how the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda could harm Americans.

Veronica Goodman, a senior director for workforce development policy at the centre, wrote that registered apprenticeships benefit workers and employers alike and instead of weakening apprenticeships, policymakers should invest more in the existing apprenticeship system.

Registered apprenticeship is a proven high-quality earn-and-learn model that leads to family-sustaining jobs in occupations such as manufacturing, construction, and carpentry, she stated, and notably, registered apprenticeship programs do not just benefit workers but also employers.