Let’s Talk… About Building a More Integrated and Comprehensive Apprenticeship System in California

December 19, 2025

 

The Expanding California's Apprenticeship System: Economic Mobility for All convening, held on December 8th, provided a rare and deeply important opportunity – a long overdue gathering. This convening, for the first time in a long time, enabled practitioners, state leaders, educators, employers, intermediaries, and advocates to come together, in the same room, to talk about building a more coherent apprenticeship system in California that works across industries, regions, and communities.

An apprenticeship is one of the few paid, debt-free pathways to a high quality job and, although California has pockets of innovation, the apprenticeship ecosystem is highly fragmented and individual programs are difficult to scale. Apprenticeships also have a strong ties to the building trades (e.g. electricians, plumbers, carpenters) but non-traditional sectors (tech, healthcare, public sector, climate resilience) are still emerging and the many promising pilots in this space across our state often live in separate systems (K-12, community colleges, CBOs). There are an incredible number of partners who share a vision for a more expansive apprenticeship ecosystem in California but there is no single pathway or pipeline for learners or employers to access.

At the convening, NextGen, in partnership with Apprenticeships for America, Jobs for the Future, and CareerWise USA, offered an innovative blueprint for breaking down system barriers and creating a more seamless and accessible pipeline for the various segments of the apprenticeship system. Through presentations, panel discussions, and breakout sessions, participants learned about the proposed blueprint and were asked to help build this new system, brick-by-brick, together. The conversations and questions pointed toward several themes:

1. Engage employers at scale, particularly in nontraditional sectors;
2. Align the K-16 system so apprenticeship is a true earn-and-learn pathway;
3. Shift from short-term grants toward sustainable, predictable funding; and
4. More deliberate integration of apprenticeship into the workforce system, so it becomes a default option for workers and employers alike.

Speakers also stressed the importance of embedding equity into the system, ensuring youth, justice-impacted individuals, and communities historically left out of opportunity could access these pathways.

What made this convening especially novel was the breadth and diversity of represented voices around the table. Employer leaders sat alongside educators and workforce partners. Practitioners spoke candidly with legislative and agency staff about what is working on the ground and what policy barriers still stand in the way. Let’s tell it like it is: roll up your sleeves and get to work, cross-sector dialogue is very uncommon in policymaking circles yet essential to developing and building real system change – and this gathering provided that meaningful opportunity.

The convening was not an endpoint but rather the start of important conversations that NextGen plans to facilitate through 2026. In January, we will host a follow-up event focused on youth apprenticeship and dialogue around the The California Youth Apprenticeship Model report released by the California Youth Apprenticeship Committee (CYAC). This report includes recommendations that complement the blueprint and will be another guidepost for this system reform work.

Over the coming year, partners across this ecosystem will further develop the policy blueprint and work together to advance the changes needed to make apprenticeship a more job-diverse, durable, connected, and equitable pillar of California’s workforce strategy.

We are grateful to everyone who joined us and invite partnership with all stakeholders that believe in this shared vision of apprenticeship expansion and systemwide reform. We look forward to further collaboration.

Thanks for reading,

Kami Peer

 

 

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