Don't Repeat Green Jobs: Eric Seleznow on Apprenticeship in the AI Moment

Eric Seleznow: When they bring apprentices on a job, this floored me when I went to Switzerland, Scott. You go to these places, they were doing really serious level work, right? I'm talking 17-year-olds. The biggest difference is the acceptance of both employers, shop supervisors, families and apprentices. It is a well-integrated program. It integrates the education. It was a very clear pathway for students. It was great opportunity. It was decent wages, but there was an acceptance.

Scott Jensen: Hello, I'm Scott Jensen. In my time in government, both state government and as a Fed, I've been lucky enough to get to know people who, like me, are committed to facing our nation's workforce challenges and solving them. Now I lead the future of work practice at Infosys Public Services. And in this podcast, we're going to check in with some of the best practitioners in the business to see how things are going. with our country's preparation for the future of work. So today, we are very lucky. I get to speak with my old friend, Eric Seleznow. Eric, you have a long resume, so you stop me and tell me if I'm missing anything. First, you were the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary at the United States Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration when Tom Perez was the Secretary and Barack Obama was President. More recently, however, you were Senior Advisor and Director at the JFF’s, Jobs for the Future’s Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning. And before that, however, Policy Director for the National Skills Coalition. And most importantly, you were the Executive Director of the Governor's Workforce Board in Maryland, where we got to know each other and had a lot of fun back in the day. So it is terrific to have you. Most importantly, I don't think, and just to make sure people know this, everybody in workforce is sold on the apprenticeship model. And I'm just going to say it, that's in large part because of your work. And that's what we’re talking about today is apprenticeship.

Eric Seleznow: Thank you. It’s so great to be here, Scott. Apprenticeship needs to be normalized and understood and used. It ain't rocket science. I heard somebody recently say if you make a mistake, you're not going to lose a finger, but it can have great outcomes, good wages, and good jobs.

Scott Jensen: So take us in the way back machine to Obama years. What was the story with apprenticeship back then?

Eric Seleznow: It was during the Obama administration, back in 2014, the White House wanted to do a major workforce initiative. So as was their process, which I don't think is used today, they had a group of people from multiple departments, from veterans, from education, from commerce, from labor, all those people you and I have known for many years Scott. We all got together, small group at the White House and sort of brainstormed what works, what does the data say work, what are the wages say work? And if you looked at every single workforce strategy, whether it's a local workforce board doing OJT, or contract training, or sending people to community college and then a job, whatever we did, we have a lot of workforce strategies, many of which are good, they still didn't get you the earnings gains and the longevity in the job that apprenticeship got. And I was like, well, that's a no brainer, right? But why do we, we don’t only have to do it in construction and the trades, right? That was our big twist in ’15, right? And a lot of states came along with us, but the real lift was Secretary Perez at the time, with approval from the White House, put out $175 million in 2015. We talked a lot about diversity back then, but it wasn't just diversity of people because I would say the unions are largely white, largely male. And our goal was to diversify that with women, people of color, and diversify by industry sector and add a little something that you did well in Maryland, add a little sector strategies involved, right? Working with industry, working with employers, get there. So it didn't, it’s need to be elevators and iron workers and carpenters and all that. You could also do it with nurses, phlebotomy techs, insurance, technology, and now they're talking about AI. So apprenticeship model which was used for everything from firefighting, correctional officers, and the traditional trades was sort of blown up to bring people along on a career pathway but more importantly get into a lot of different industries because the model was great and I still say to this day Scott and we'd get killed if we didn't acknowledge we're standing on the shoulders of our brothers and sisters in labor. In organized labor, who started this a hundred years ago, and I think what we tried to do back then is just exploded, expanded, move it up, get more of the, you know, those other workforce things were great, but apprenticeship had a role that needed to be expanded. And if you just looked at the performance outcomes, it would show you that, you know, better jobs, better earnings, but a lot of challenges in apprenticeship that we had to deal with and rolling it out, getting people to understand it. And a lot of those challenges are still there today. The history of it in the United States, I think is a big deal. And we'll talk just in a second about the differences with Europe especially. But it was a building trades thing. Apprenticeship in some states, we'll call it Maryland, the trades were very, very sensitive about it because they didn't want, it's a wage law there's a lot of cheating that goes on with apprenticeship and public works projects that you have to deal with.

Scott Jensen: What are the differences, for example, between Europe and the European models and what we have and what do we have to learn from them?

Eric Seleznow: The US were like stepchildren to the international apprenticeship world, right? They knew we did labor and that was building trades and basically that was it. However, once, and I'll say we, once the Obama administration, not me certainly, but them, started marketing it and talking about it and the Vice President’s wife at the time, Dr. Biden, went to Switzerland, brought me with her. And that's where we saw the Swiss model, which a lot of folks in America have already been there, have done that trip, have seen it and seen the outcomes and successes. Really mature, focused model. What's the biggest difference? The biggest difference is the acceptance of both employers, shop supervisors, families and apprentices, that's all. It is a well-integrated program. It integrates the education. When they bring apprentices on a job, this floored me when I went to Switzerland, Scott. You go to these places, they were doing really serious level work, right? I'm talking 17-year-olds. It was also more of a youth model, right? So Switzerland, Germany, UK to a lesser extent, but they use these as youth models for high schools and transition them either into a point of going to technical training or going to university. You could do both or you could go technical training and then two, three years later go to the university. But it was a very clear pathway for students. It was great opportunity. It was decent wages, but there was an acceptance. And I remember talking to a bunch of CEOs over there, Scott, and I searched high and low for CEOs in this country that would talk like that. And so what we started doing back then, which is great, is go to Swiss companies that were investing in the US. Well, the UK has a levy, a tax that supports apprenticeship. This country does not have that right and the problem with our country compared to them is we keep getting this thing a new president every few years and man it's like a whipsaw back and forth I think we had a thing going for eight years and what that allowed us to do is get funding from Congress that has gone up to, I think, $250 million a year on top of specialized grant programs. And there's, I think, $175 million out on the street now that may have just closed from USDOL. So with one administration over eight years, we could really build it. Then we had, after that, we had the Trump administration, then the Biden administration, now Trump again. And just, I think apprenticeship is still there. There are true believers. I think it's bipartisan to a larger extent. I think with the Trump administration, quite honestly, they want to do a million apprentices. Well, I hate saying we're going to do a million or 500,000. Yes, you have to have goals, but they get carried away with numbers and those numbers are only as good as the economy is and jobs are open and what they're doing to make it a good economy for jobs. You have an economy that's having trouble, the jobs are not going to open up and it's going to slow down apprenticeship. Apprenticeships survived COVID, but youth apprenticeships suffered serious, all apprenticeships suffered seriously during COVID. So we're clearly, whatever's going to happen with AI in our economy, it's going to have an interesting impact. A lot of people are going to have to change what they're doing. Young people are going to have to do things a little bit differently. Again, I think everybody's talking about apprenticeship as part of the solution to that problem.

Scott Jensen: What do we need to look out for?

Eric Seleznow: So I have some feelings about this and there's probably people who are out there struggling with this as we speak. So I would encourage them to get in touch with you, Scott, maybe for some follow up stuff, because I'm sure there's people out there doing it. And I know DOL has just come up with some sort of basic AI training. So here's my view about that. And this is a guy, as you did, we lived through the green revolution and green jobs, you know, healthcare this, healthcare that, we go back to 2000 and the dot com and IT and where Windows was a big deal and we had to train people on that. And my entire career, it's been the future of work. And oh my God, we're going to have IT and we all got to learn spreadsheets and Windows and Lotus and oh my God, we got to do this and that. And now the green jobs. So here was the problem with the green jobs. The green job revolution was the cart before the horse. We started talking about training and all of this education, training, and career passing before we knew where the jobs were. Well, we didn't need a whole new electricians. We just needed an electrician who also needed to know how to install solar or an HVAC mechanic who also knew how to do geothermal or a lot of different people who could just have more skills, not necessarily a whole new direction. There were some of those jobs out there. But basically, I think what we learned from that, we spent a lot of money doing a lot of stuff. DOL just great idea. We're going to put money out. We are going to do. We are going to solve the green jobs problem. Well, there wasn't a green jobs problem because nobody knew what green jobs were. And there was a lot of stress around that. So with AI, I feel the same. I've tried to stay current with the data, right? So where are these AI jobs going to be? I don't know. Most people don't. I think AI is going to be integrated into everybody's job at some level or another, right? Yeah, it may replace a bunch of jobs, but it also may create new ones. I don't want to dismiss AI as having an impact on the labor market, but we don't know exactly. And the key to what we do in workforce, Scott, is we need to know the industry sectors really, really well and the job data in those sectors so we can be effective. And I'm not sure it's clear yet. Some IT companies may have it, AI companies, specific companies may have it, but we don't know where the broad application is going to be, right? And I'm just wondering if you’ve thought about that. If you have other thoughts about it, because we're not done yet. We are right in middle of this. Everybody's worried about it.

Scott Jensen: Gina Raimondo has been on a world tour kind of sounding the alarm bells on this issue. And you know, if any, she's been digging deep into it. And you know, I think there isn't a clear view yet about exactly what we should do. However, it's clear, just like you said, that the workforce system and retraining, community colleges, all of our apparatus is going to need to be pretty flexible because it's going to iterate. And so it kind of goes back to, you know, got to be demand-driven, to really have good partnerships so that these things can grow and we can respond. Because if we don't, the companies aren't going to get anybody and the people that lose their jobs aren't going to be able to get plugged back in.

Eric Seleznow: It's funny, it's not funny, but you use the word demand-driven, which sounds so trite and old nowadays, but it's so true, right? Training and preparation follows where the jobs are. So we can't train people if we don't know where the jobs are or what the job knowledge, skills and ability is or what the day-to-day work is. So we can then lay AI or anything else onto that. But education trainings follows jobs. If you get out there in front of jobs, you're going to train a lot of people for nothing. So we got to be really careful.

Scott Jensen: Speaking of that, since I've got you, WIOA, last time I checked, hasn’t been reauthorized since 2020, What are the top two or three things that need to be included in your judgment that would be a real benefit to the next iteration?

Eric Seleznow: I mean, I have to say over the last 10 years, the WIA folks and the apprenticeship folks in states have gotten a lot closer together in most states, right? They share each other's boards, they go to each other's meetings, they try to work together. At least the WIA director knows who the apprenticeship director of it's a split state, right? And that was never the case. So we've made huge steps forward, but we need to capitalize and build on that. So I still think the OL needs to do a lot of work in explaining to the field how to integrate apprenticeship into WIOA, right? The apprenticeship program planning. The reason registered apprenticeship is good because it has so much planning and structure involved. It's also a bit of a challenge, right? We just have to stay at it. And I think the biggest thing is let's not give up all the other great things that we do that are that are very good. I still think on the job training contracts, which I know the system doesn't love. I still think they were effective for certain people. I think going to the community college pathways was effective for other folks. So a lot of things we did was good, but let's keep laying apprenticeship in there just because it's going to really help wages and growth.

Scott Jensen: Well, thanks, Eric. For everybody, thanks for joining us. You can find more details, show notes, and transcripts of the podcast at Infosys.com/IKI. Thanks to our producers, Christine Calhoun, Yulia De Bari and Dode Bigley who saves us every time. I'm Scott Jensen and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks.