In bid for Millennials, Hillary Clinton proposes apprenticeship program
Loading...
Hillary Clinton wants businesses to start hiring more young apprentices, and she plans to give them incentives to do it.
At a South Carolina stop on the campaign trail Wednesday, Ms. Clinton announced plans to offer businesses a $1,500 tax credit for each apprentice, .
Courting Millennials, the group composed of 18- to 34-year-olds, could produce big payoffs for Clinton, as聽Pew Research Center聽聽suggests that by the end of the year, Millennials will be the largest living population in the United States.
While unemployment nationwide was only 5.5 percent in May 2015, Millennials bore a disproportionate share of the load. On average, Millennials are more than twice as likely as the over-35 set to be looking for work, according to聽聽from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Clinton's aides said her plan would echo a bill introduced by Senators Tim Scott (R) of South Carolina and Cory Booker (D) of New Jersey called the聽, which supporters have said could create as many as 400,000 new jobs.
Workers in apprenticeships earn on average $6,595 more per year after completing the program, according to a 2012聽. A聽聽found that former apprentices can command an average starting salary of $50,000.
Under Clinton鈥檚 plan, paid apprenticeships could present an attractive alternative to unpaid internships for students and recent graduates looking for work and on-the-job training.
鈥淎pprenticeships are a proven way to help people develop in-demand skills and to meet the needs of employers, yet they compose just 0.2 percent of the nation鈥檚 workforce,鈥 according to a . Millions of jobs remain unfilled because companies struggle to find qualified workers, notes Sen. Booker鈥檚聽.听
Meanwhile, The Atlantic's provocatively titled "" estimated that between 500,000 and 1 million interns work for free in the United States. Fair Labor Standards Act say unpaid internships must meet certain criteria, such as making sure the employer does not gain any direct benefit from the intern鈥檚 work, and that the internship is structured as an educational experience, but these requirements are rarely enforced.
Apprenticeship Carolina director Brad Neese聽聽last year that apprenticeships can help reconcile a college graduate鈥檚 greenness in terms of experience and the lack of meaningful work involved in many internships.
Neese said that while college graduates often demonstrate 鈥渁 real lack of applicability in terms of skill level鈥 and says 鈥渋nterns do grunt work, generally,鈥 he sees an apprenticeship as 鈥渁 real job.鈥
But apprenticeship programs have downsides, too. The Wall Street Journal reported that businesses are often reluctant to hire apprentices, fearing they may later lose their investment to another company, and that Labor Department statistics showed a 40% drop from 2003 to 2013 in programs 鈥渢hat combine on-the-job learning with mentorships and classroom education.鈥
Additionally, it is unclear whether or not tax credits are effective incentives for businesses, according to The Huffington Post鈥檚 2012 of the HIRE Act, under which businesses could earn tax credits for hiring and retaining unemployed workers.
鈥淭he Treasury Department that from February to October of 2010, businesses hired more than 10 million unemployed people who could have made them eligible for the law's incentives,鈥 Arthur Delaney wrote in the article. 鈥淏ut there's no telling how many of those hires were actually caused by the incentives, and economists took a dim view of the program. Economists and worker advocates have suspected employers would collect incentives for hires they would have made anyway.鈥
Clinton is expected to announce more details and discuss her聽own apprenticeship at the Children鈥檚 Defense Fund in 1973 later Wednesday,