President Donald Trump signed an executive order that will increase apprenticeship funding to $200 million.
The goal is to create 5 million apprenticeships over the next five years. The private sector will be given more leeway to design apprenticeship programs.
Apprenticeships totaled just over 500,000 last year, with about half of those in the construction industry, according to the Department of Labor. The Associated Builders and Contractors hailed the announcement and said that the skills training enabled by the plan would help eliminate a construction industry worker shortage of 500,000.
The money for the program is to come from existing job training programs.
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