The number of registered apprenticeships in Virginia has grown six-fold in the last decade. They’re good investments for employers, who “grow their own” to meet labor force needs. WMRA’s Christine Kueter continues in this second part of our three-part series “Trading Up.”
[sound of Alex Funk taking out tools from her backpack]
Alex Funk’s job comes with a bag full of tricks.
ALEX FUNK: Cutting pliers, linesman’s pliers, little Channellocks. This is a non-contact voltage tester. Big hawkbill knife …
Funk is in her second year of UVa’s paid four-year apprenticeship program. She used to work on fighter jets in the Air Force and has a degree in art. Now she’s on a path to become an electrician but is learning the basics of other trades, too.
FUNK: I really had no exposure to HVAC, you know, before coming in, I didn’t really know what that entailed at all. It was really, really cool to be able to experience that. Plumbing was great, too. Honestly, I found out, “oh, plumbing really translates the most to what I did on jets, surprisingly, because I mostly worked hydraulics, you know, and it's, “oh, same concepts, a lot of the same parts, and everything.” I chose electrical coming in, I know I’m going to be an electrician one day. Getting exposure to the other trades is really beneficial, not just for personal growth, but, also, the way UVa operates, I mean, people are on call. There’s a rotating on-call schedule. If you don’t know anything about HVAC and something goes out, you can’t really do anything.
Funk is one of more than 15,000 registered apprentices in Virginia, and more than 720,000 nationally. Apprenticeships have been a staple in other countries, such as Switzerland and Germany, where more than half of young people do them. In the U.S., they’ve grown more common and valuable. A Department of Labor study found that employers with apprenticeships earn $144 for every $100 they invest.
Last summer, the federal government distributed $85 million in its fourth round of state apprenticeship grants to train more workers for in-demand fields. Virginia got $2.2 million of that. Community colleges and vocational training centers also got money to help students with tuition. Piedmont Virginia Community College senior director of admissions Todd Parks says it created a surge in interest.
TODD PARKS: There’s employment growth, there are good wages, and there are opportunities for folks to, I think, build a better life for themselves and those that they care about pretty quickly. There’s also quite a bit of money available for individuals that want to come to PVCC and pursue training in the skilled trades. So many students can complete that training at very little to no cost.
And coming they are. Parks says most skilled trades classes at PVCC are at capacity. Electrical and HVAC programs now have wait lists. Leigh Keniston, PVCC’s vice president of academic affairs and workforce development, says attitudes are changing.
LEIGH KENISTON: When we’re talking about skilled trades, unfortunately, there’s a kind of stigma within our culture, that, I mean, “my kid’s going to go to college,” right? “They’re not going to go into a skilled trades, blue collar, dirty work type profession.” A lot of that is changing. We really are kind of chipping away at that perception that, one, maybe your student, maybe your son or daughter, they're not ready for college, and here is a field where they’re going to be making as much money, if not more, as somebody coming out with a traditional bachelor’s degree.
Welding instructor Scott Ishler says starting wages in the skilled trades are solid—and growing. Electricians’ median pay is about $30 an hour, but—
SCOTT ISHLER: There are definitely opportunities to make far more than that. So, I know a master electrician, he manages a lot of projects, but he makes over $100,000. He’s about 12 years into the industry. Then, if they do contract work, we have North Anna, at Lake Anna Nuclear Power facility, electricians there make $52 an hour. Data center work is about the same, around $50.
It’ll be two more years before electrical apprentice Alex Funk graduates and sits for her certification exam. She hopes to remain at UVa, where she’ll earn $70,000 a year. The salary, stability, and benefits are great—Funk’s a single mom to three-year-old Ryan—but she appreciates the work’s creativity, too.
FUNK: There’s a lot of carryover … the creativity that comes from studying art. Figuring out, like, I did sculpture, so, I learned how to work with materials, trying to figure out, how can you manipulate, how many different ways can you manipulate this kind of metal, whatever you’re working with, and a lot of that transfers over. Trying to come up with hardware configurations, if something’s not going to fit. How to make things work outside of the box.
