The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Employment and Training Administration (ETA), launched the American Apprenticeship Initiative (AAI) in October 2015. AAI provided five-year AAI grants to 46 grantees across the country to expand registered apprenticeship into new industry sectors and to populations historically underrepresented in apprenticeships. In April 2016, ETA, in collaboration with DOL's Chief Evaluation Office (CEO), commissioned an evaluation of the AAI grant program to build evidence about the effectiveness of registered apprenticeship for apprentices and employers.

This is the third of three reports presenting implementation study findings. In addition to the implementation study, the AAI evaluation includes three sub-studies: a study of the AAI apprentices' outcomes; a study that measures the returns to employers on their investments in apprenticeship programs; and a demonstration study, tested by two grantees, exploring the impacts of a training intervention focused on marketing apprenticeship training to employers.

The AAI implementation study describes the design and operation of grantee apprenticeship programs; identifies potential promising practices and perceived challenges that can inform policy and future program design; and provides important context for the project sub-studies. It presents findings on grantee program operations from fall 2017 (approximately two years into the grant when data were first available) through summer 2021, and documents how grantees performed in relation to the targets outlined in their grant agreements for the number of programs registered, apprentices registered, and pre-apprentices served.

Key findings in this report include the following:
1) The grantees varied in the extent to which they met program and apprentice registration goals. AAI grantees exceeded the apprenticeship program registration and apprentice registration targets articulated in their grant applications. AAI grantees registered 2,111 apprenticeship programs, or 102 percent of their target. AAI grantees registered 29,553 apprentices, 103 percent of their target.

2) Grantees successfully registered apprentices in nontraditional occupations. Overall, 77 percent of registered apprentices were in nontraditional apprenticeship occupations. More women (91 percent) than men (72 percent) registered in nontraditional apprenticeship occupations. Men commonly registered in advanced manufacturing (39 percent) and construction (28 percent) occupations, and women commonly registered in healthcare (51 percent) and "other" (18 percent) occupations, including insurance, banking, and transportation.

3) Grantees successfully recruited pre-apprentices and apprentices from underrepresented populations. Eighty-eight (88) percent of pre-apprentices and 68 percent of apprentices were from underrepresented populations.

4) Grantees also exceeded all targets for pre-apprenticeship. Twenty-two (49 percent) of grantees had proposed in their grant applications to implement one or more pre-apprenticeship programs. Ultimately, 39 grantees (87 percent) implemented a pre-apprenticeship program, 77 percent more than had been planned. The grantees that implemented a pre-apprenticeship program enrolled 10,811 pre-apprentices (34 percent more than they had proposed in their grant applications).