Tracking a Decade of Growth in Rural Registered Apprenticeships

Introduction

Apprenticeship is a compelling workforce development model for rural communities looking to grow and retain local talent. However, little is known about how common apprenticeship is in rural communities. In this post¹, we look at the past 10 years of data on Registered Apprenticeship statewide and nationally. Between 2016 and 2025, the share of registered apprentices in rural communities has grown steadily: In 2025, nearly one-fifth (18 percent) of new apprentices were located in rural communities. While urban communities add more apprentices each year due to their population size, by percentage, rural apprenticeship is growing at a faster rate. Since 2023, the number of new apprentices grew by 16 percent in rural communities and grew by 6 percent in urban communities.

Youth participation is one part of the story behind the growth in rural apprenticeship. Over the last decade, the share of apprentices aged 16 to 24 in rural communities grew by 15 percentage points to 43 percent in 2025. In the last three years, youth participation explained more than half of the growth in Registered Apprenticeship in rural communities. As rural communities build robust workforce pathways, apprenticeship will continue to be an important model. In addition, designing programs for youth success will be important for continued growth in apprenticeship.

How Can Apprenticeship Benefit Rural Communities?

Employment in rural communities was slow to recover following the COVID-19 pandemic, and employers in small cities and rural communities reported having a hard time finding workers with the right skills.

For example, young people often leave their rural hometowns in pursuit of educational opportunities and jobs, and the rural working-age population declined between 2010 and 2023. Together, these forces can constrain rural talent pools. Apprenticeship programs in rural communities can help connect residents to local job opportunities while offering employers a strategy for growing a local workforce with the skills needed to succeed in their companies. But what exactly is an apprenticeship?

Unlike traditional occupational skills training, an apprenticeship is a paid job, which provides financial security and on-the-job experience from day one. A Registered Apprenticeship is required to have several other components: on-the-job training that develops job-related skills; an assigned mentor; related technical instruction that provides contextual learning about a field; wage progression as the apprentice completes milestones; and an industry-recognized credential that indicates occupational proficiency. Registered apprentices were about 8 percentage points more likely to be employed two years after completion and earned approximately $13,000 more per year than similar public workforce program participants who did not pursue an apprenticeship. In addition, multiple studies have found that apprenticeships yielded a positive return on investment for employers. These metrics underscore the value that the apprenticeship model provides to both employers and employees.

Implementing an apprenticeship model in rural communities can be challenging because of barriers relating to geographic and digital access, employer capacity, educational preparation, and workplace culture. Through innovative transportation support models and practical solutions for expanding digital access and online learning, rural apprenticeship programs are developing strategies to overcome these barriers.

This post highlights the prevalence of apprenticeship in rural communities by looking at trends over the last decade. We examine the number of workers who start a Registered Apprenticeship each year — as opposed to active apprentices in a given year — in order to better capture change over time. We locate apprentices according to the state and county of the program sponsor, and in cases of national programs, the location of the provider of related technical instruction. We define rural communities as nonmetro counties and counties in metros with fewer than 250,000 people. (See below for more information in the data and methods appendix.)

Rural Communities Represent a Growing Share of Registered Apprenticeship

In parallel with the employment loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of new registered apprentices in the United States dipped in 2020 before rebounding and exceeding pre-pandemic levels. Since then, the number of new apprentices in the United States has surpassed its prepandemic level, reaching just over 250,000 in 2025.

In 2025, about one-fifth (18 percent) of new registered apprentices were located in rural communities, and that share has grown consistently over the past decade. The rural share of new apprentices increased from 15 percent in 2016 to 18 percent in 2025, representing a 3 percentage point gain. Our analysis is within the ballpark of a similar analysis performed by Jobs for the Future, which found that the rural share of apprenticeship is approximately 10 percent.

While urban communities add more apprentices in raw terms because of their population size, by proportion, rural communities have seen a larger growth rate in apprenticeship. Between 2023 and 2025, the number of new apprentices in rural communities grew by 16 percent, compared with 6 percent in urban communities. These growth rates are particularly pronounced considering that rural employment grew by 1 percent, and urban employment grew by 3 percent over that period.

Rural Participation in Apprenticeship Varies Across States

There is variation in urbanization from one state to the next. Understanding whether apprenticeship participation mirrors this variation can reveal which states are successfully engaging rural workers in apprenticeship programs. If apprenticeship opportunities were distributed proportionally, we would expect a state's rural share of apprentices to match its rural share of employment. To test this, we plotted each state's rural share of apprentices against its rural share of employment.² The diagonal line represents perfect proportionality — positions where a state's rural share of apprentices is proportional to its rural employment share.

Most states fall to the right of the diagonal line, indicating that their rural share of new apprentices is below what might be expected given their overall level of rurality. Five states in particular exhibited pronounced gaps: New Mexico, Mississippi, Hawaii, Alaska, and Oklahoma each have rural apprenticeship shares that fall more than 20 percentage points below what their rural employment shares would predict.

Conversely, several states demonstrate near proportional or above expected rural apprenticeship participation. Some states fall closely along the diagonal line, indicating their rural apprenticeship shares closely align with what might be expected given their states' levels of rurality (e.g., West Virginia and South Carolina). Several others — Michigan, Missouri, South Dakota, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Illinois — have rural apprenticeship shares that exceed rural employment shares.

Rural Participation in Apprenticeship Is Largely Proportional With Rural Employment in Fifth District States

States in the Fifth Federal Reserve District all fall closely along the diagonal line. Rural participation in apprenticeship was close to what would be expected given rural employment. However, in North Carolina, the share of rural apprenticeship exceeded the share of rural employment by 6 percentage points.

Youth Are an Increasing Share of Apprentices in Rural Communities

Youth participation in Registered Apprenticeship has become increasingly common nationwide, but the trend is particularly pronounced in rural communities. Over the last decade, the share of apprentices aged 16 to 24 in rural communities increased substantially from 28 percent in 2016 to 43 percent in 2025, representing a 15 percentage point gain.

There is considerable heterogeneity in youth participation trends at the state level. Among Fifth District states, Maryland and South Carolina stand out for distinct reasons.

Maryland exhibits consistently high youth participation in rural apprenticeship. Maryland's youth share in rural communities has remained consistently above that of other Fifth District states and above the national trend, exceeding 40 percent and reaching a peak of 67 percent in 2025.

South Carolina, by contrast, exemplifies rapid growth from a low base. South Carolina experienced a marked increase in its youth participation in rural apprenticeship. The youth share rose from 13 percent in 2016 to 37 percent in 2025, representing a steep growth trajectory comparable to that in Maryland.

The remaining Fifth District states — North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia — have experienced more moderate growth, with youth shares generally trending upward but remaining below Maryland's levels. In 2025, each had the same share of youth apprentices in rural communities: Thirty-nine percent.

Youth Represent Most of the Growth in Registered Apprenticeship in Rural Communities

How much has youth participation contributed to the growth in rural apprenticeship? To answer this question, we calculated year-over-year increases in rural apprenticeship overall and for three age cohorts (16 to 24; 25 to 34; and 35 and over). We then compared the observed growth for each age cohort with the overall growth. Since 2023, youth aged 16 to 24 represented more than half of the growth in rural apprenticeship. Their share of rural apprenticeship growth peaked at 67 percent in 2023 and was 52 percent in 2025.

Conclusion

Rural apprenticeship is a growing and increasingly youth-focused workforce development strategy. With a growing share of youth apprentices in rural communities, youth apprenticeship models are increasingly important. While states define youth apprenticeship differently, these models can engage high school students, give opportunities to begin coursework before graduating, and provide connection to work immediately after high school.

Looking ahead, several questions merit further investigation. Understanding what program facets make for successful youth apprenticeships will be increasingly important for rural communities in building robust workforce pathways. The role of employer engagement, educational partnerships, and financial incentives in driving rural apprenticeship growth deserves closer examination.