State officials tell lawmakers registered apprenticeships depend on available jobs; wait lists reflect job scarcity, not training capacity

South Seattle Community College — Washington State apprenticeship leaders told the House Postsecondary Education & Workforce Committee that registered apprenticeship is fundamentally a job-based training model and that expanding apprenticeship in the state depends on creating and using job opportunities, not only standing up training programs.

"Registered apprenticeship starts with a job," Rachel McAloon, program manager of the registered apprenticeship section at the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, said during a Sept. work session at the Georgetown campus. She and other presenters described the model as a combo of paid on‑the‑job training and classroom instruction, and reiterated federal and state minimums: at least 2,000 hours of paid on‑the‑job training and a minimum of 144 hours of classroom instruction per year.

That linkage matters for policy, presenters said. "Thereis not a worker shortage. Thereis a living‑wage job shortage," Ray Dumas of Masons and Plasters Local 528 said, summarizing a building trades survey showing large numbers of workers on out‑of‑work lists…