Report finds earnings of apprenticeship grads rival those with four-year degrees

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A recent report finds graduates of union apprenticeships earn wages and benefits that rival those earned by workers with a four-year college degree, calling such programs the “bachelor’s degree” of the construction industry.

The report, from the union-affiliated Illinois Economic Policy Institute, compares wages and other outcomes for graduates of union apprenticeship programs, non-union programs and those with a four-year degree from the University of Wisconsin System.

The report finds graduates of registered apprenticeship programs in Wisconsin earn about $67,249 a year on average — pay that rivals the $69,498 that workers with a bachelor’s degree earn. Frank Manzo, the report’s author, said union apprenticeship programs in particular deliver wages and benefits that bolster a middle-class lifestyle.

“Construction apprenticeship programs bolster Wisconsin’s middle class,” Manzo said. “The workers who complete these joint programs earn $67,000 per year. This is on par with workers with bachelor’s degrees, and it comes without an average of $27,000 a year in student loan debt.”

The Midwest Economic Policy Institute, which is led by a board of Illinois contractors and labor representatives, has authored a variety of reports comparing union and non-union construction in the Midwest. The group produced a report in 2020 finding Wisconsin’s repeal of prevailing wages drove down earning for construction workers and caused more out-of-state firms to win work. Another 2019 study found Minnesota had seen faster growth in union apprenticeships than Wisconsin.

The group’s latest report compares outcomes of construction apprentices in programs that are registered with the U.S. Department of Labor, although it does not measure apprentices that aren’t in registered programs, Manzo said. The report also looks at statewide outcomes and doesn’t examine education outcomes in various regions of Wisconsin.

The report finds apprenticeship programs require more training on average than the University of Wisconsin-Madison requires to earn a bachelor’s degree. In Wisconsin, union construction apprenticeship programs require about 7,200 hours of training on a job site or in the classroom to graduate. Those with a four-year college degree in Wisconsin spend about 5,100 hours in the classroom or on homework.

Manzo said the report used graduation requirements from the undergraduate program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to come up how many work hours it would take to earn a four-year degree there. That figure may not capture varying graduation requirements for programs across the University of Wisconsin System, however.

The report, meanwhile, finds both union and non-union construction programs in Wisconsin are less racially diverse than students at four-year colleges. Among Wisconsin four-year colleges, 82.3% of students were white in 2021, compared with 89.3% in union construction programs and 93.2% in non-union programs.

The report, meanwhile, compares the outcomes of union and non-union apprentices in Wisconsin. The study finds union construction workers earned an average of $34.38 an hour, compared with $24.24 an hour for non-union workers, citing Census data from 2015 to 2019.

The group also viewed 2018 Internal Revenue Service documents to conclude that the top-five union apprenticeship programs invested a combined $21.7 million in training, compared with the $2.3 million the Associated Builders and Contractors of Wisconsin spent on its apprenticeship training program.

The report also said ABC of Wisconsin employed zero training staff for its program in 2018 — a figure the trade organization disputes. John Schulze, legislative and government affairs director for the group, said ABC of Wisconsin employs nine staff to work with apprentices and has about 40 trainers across the state. Schulze said the study failed to capture ABC’s relationship with the Wisconsin Technical College System in its apprenticeship program.

“The problem with this study is that the academics did not leave their ivory tower in Illinois and come up to Wisconsin to get a true understanding of how ABC apprenticeship works,” Schulze said. “This study is the equivalent of comparing a motorcycle to a truck with dualies and focusing on how much each spends on tires to commute to work. Is it significant that ABC trains hundreds of more electrical apprentices than the plumbers union? Probably not, and so is comparing the union apprenticeship model to the ABC model.”