This story is the first in a two-part series about apprenticeships in Vermont.
RICHMOND — Two summers ago, in the early hours of a July morning, Brad Snow was hauled out of the Richmond Water Department in a bucket loader.
The Winooski River, which the town relies on to keep its faucets from running dry, had revolted, flooding Snow and his fellow water operators into the building-turned-island.
Stranded, they still scrambled to keep the town’s water system from caving in on itself.
“That thing had tires to the ceiling,” Snow, 28, said of his getaway vehicle. But he didn’t stay gone for long.
Snow has built up a series of licenses that allow him to work multiple roles in the complex water system. He clocks his hours through the Vermont Rural Water Association, which manages his state-registered, two-year apprenticeship, providing him with trainings and hundreds of hours of classroom instruction that are required to pass his licensing test.
Apprenticeships like Snow’s solidify individual careers. Increasingly, officials and employers are also using the model as a tool to rebuild the state’s severely hobbled workforce.
Vermont has one of the most severe labor shortages in the country, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Prior to the pandemic, the labor market was stable, but in the years since, it has dipped below its pre-pandemic level and the national average.
According to July data, there are two jobs for every one unemployed person in Vermont.
“People can get a job, that’s not the issue,” said Joyce Judy, president of the Community College of Vermont. “What we’re asking is, can you advance? Can you make more money in the future? Do you want to have more responsibility?”
It’s also a way to retain workers in the state, Judy said.
Some of the most essential — and precarious — industries in Vermont are responding to these workforce demands by “growing their own” and investing in apprenticeships, a model that had typically only been considered for workers in the trades. But now it’s grabbing new attention as a sustainable solution to labor shortages across the gamut.
Much of Judy’s work pairs professional programs with college credits at her own institution. A new partnership with Central Vermont Medical Center, for example, accredits employees with hours toward their nursing license while they’re on the job.
Professional education opportunities like apprenticeships “just open different doors,” Judy said.
They also require upfront investment. The Richmond Water Department pays $3,000 to VRWA for the program to train Snow, the apprentice, with incremental wage increases as he passes training benchmarks. But it’s a commitment to the department’s future.
While there are over 10,000 openings in water and wastewater treatment plant operators projected nationally each year, within the next decade, 6% of water operators are expected to leave the industry, either for retirement or other forms of employment, according to data this year from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That attrition rate could be greater in Vermont, which trends older, said Allison Smith, who helps run Snow’s apprenticeship through the rural water association. The program is meant to turn hired hands into career operators, aiding them through what can sometimes be a perilous and demanding certification process.
The requirements of studying for a barrage of complicated tests leave some would-be operators feeling out on a limb. “It’s just you, and your textbook, and on top of that your whole job,” Smith said.
The apprenticeship is meant to lend training and support during the process, giving participants an opportunity to earn a paycheck while they get experience on the job and in the classroom.
Smith’s organization is betting that the skills Snow is learning through his apprenticeship will help him to build a career, and keep him in Vermont staring down some of the state’s most pressing problems.
Work in water systems, for example, will only grow more complex as climate change increases the chance of the flooding that stranded Snow in his office.
Municipalities will have to think critically about making expensive decisions to move systems that are in vulnerable locations, like Richmond’s, or replace aging ones that might not be able to weather new climate demands, Smith said. Meanwhile, water operators will remain on the frontlines of the fight.
“I was doing janitorial stuff, and was like, that’s not my move,” Snow said of his life before the apprenticeship. Now he’s gunning for the highest-tiered wastewater license.
It’s above what’s required to be a licensed operator – prepping him in some of the more complicated financial and managerial skills – but he’s playing the long game.
‘Those people stay’
Last summer, a surge of money from the federal government brought new attention to this model of workforce development at the state level when Vermont was awarded nearly $400,000 from the U.S. Department of Labor to expand and diversify its apprenticeship programs.
That investment “will be critical” in building the labor capacity needed to carry out the promise of Biden administration initiatives such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the department wrote in the news release announcing the funding.
The renewed fervor for work-based learning (and the federal money) couldn’t have come at a better time, said Jay Ramsey, director of workforce development for the Vermont Department of Labor.
Vermont is facing the impact of threats that have long been simmering — among them climate change, aging infrastructure, a graying population and an affordable housing crisis -– all of which strain the state’s labor pool.
Ramsey refers to this positive feedback loop as a “Gordian Knot” tied between an employee and a job.
Most “earn while you learn” programs don’t cost their participants much or anything out of pocket, which is a boon for Vermont, where students are paying the third highest median student loan payment in the country.
Gov. Phil Scott has also made apprenticeships a cornerstone of his workforce development efforts, last year announcing an apprenticeship week in Vermont in mid-November. This year, the governor recently proclaimed an apprenticeship week once again.
“We need society to recognize that having a CDL is just as important as having a Ph.D.,” Scott said at a press conference when he assessed the damage of the July 2023 floods. At the time, he pushed for the apprenticeship model to be built out, particularly in the construction trades, as Vermont continues to respond to damage from an onslaught of historic flooding to its already limited housing stock.
This month, he reiterated the message – and with new urgency.
Noting that the latest census shows that Vermont lost 14,000 people under the age of 18 in the last decade, and gained 48,000 over the age of 65, Scott raised the alarm on the demographic vacuum.
The state needs to build up to 36,000 homes by 2029, he said at a press conference in late November, but “no matter how much money we spend or regulatory changes we make, we need people to do the work.”
Further, with the state’s legally binding commitment to drawing down greenhouse gas emissions, the workforce required to implement the technology to do so — such as solar panels and heat pumps — must be scaled up significantly, according to the Vermont Department of Public Service.
“A lot of the core jobs that are needed for a climate workforce can be served through apprenticeship models,” said Cara Robechek, Energy Action Network’s deputy director. Robechek noted the promising potential of shorter-length apprenticeships in “stackable credentials,” like weatherization or solar installation skills, which could build into a fully certified role as an electrician.
But the federal government is also invested in creating registered apprenticeships for industries beyond the traditional trades, and the state’s Department of Labor is hoping to break open their reputation in the state, applying them to areas like education, health care and manufacturing.
“When people think about apprenticeships in Vermont, they think of electrical and plumbing,” Ramsey said. “They can be used for a lot more.”
In Vermont, there are about 1,800 active apprenticeships, according to this month’s data. That’s up from just over 1,000 in 2022.
That’s in line with the national trend. The country’s 643,000 registered apprenticeships have more than doubled in number over the past decade.
Ramsey said his department is only ramping up. Act 55, enacted last summer, modernizes the state’s apprenticeship system and puts some of the burden of administration back onto employers so Ramsey’s department — freshly kitted out with a new team of three people focused solely on apprenticeships — can focus on expansion and recruitment.
“When we have fewer resources to help us with data entry and this sort of administrative stuff, it makes it difficult to look outside and try to expand,” Ramsey said.
Yet for employers, the upfront demands of the model can be daunting: apprenticeships take time and investment that aren’t required of a one-off hire. “But we’re good at talking about the return on investment,” he said. “You’re growing your own. Your employees feel supported, they have a mentor. Statistics show that those people stay.”
Still, Ramsey is clear-eyed about the work that needs to be done outside of his purview.
“Our contribution to that is we can help you recruit people and we can help you to train them and give them the skills,” he said. “State government and the Legislature is going to have to figure out how to address housing and affordability and the rest of that.”
Aspiration: Austria
In November 2023, Scott and Austrian Ambassador to the United States Petra Schneebauer signed a “memorandum of understanding” pledging collaboration between the State of Vermont and Austria on modernizing apprenticeships and other models of professional education.
“Any strategy to increase the skill and size of the labor pool should include an emphasis on apprenticeships and on the job training,” Scott said in a press release. “It’s also important for us to learn from friends abroad, like our partners in Austria, how to best serve Vermonters into the future.”
But the way of the Austrians didn’t particularly appeal to Vermonters of the past.
While the financial incentives in Vermont are new, and the issues they could be used to address are all the more urgent, apprenticeships are an old pitch.
For Steve Gold, commissioner of the state Department of Labor in the late 1990s, the apprenticeship fanfare is deja vu, even down to the state’s partnership with the Von Trapp homeland.
Under Gold, the department organized a series of annual trips to Austria for a cohort of state officials “to take notes” on the country’s robust apprenticeship network. The idea was to come back and try to promote and expand apprenticeships in Vermont into a variety of industries.
“The Austrians had apprenticeships for everything,” Gold said. “I mean, the Austrians had an apprenticeship for waiters.”
It remains the case to this day. In 2023, about a third of all employed people in Austria were enrolled in an apprenticeship. The programs come with education and on-the-job training, and the “people who graduate from them are respected for the skills that they’ve acquired,” he said.
The topography and geology of the European nation is similar enough to Vermont, Gold said, that the model might make sense at home. “There are big cities over there, but mostly there are a lot of small towns all over the place,” he said.
(They’re similar enough to be tactically strategic partners, too. The Austrian Air Force also has an agreement with the Vermont National Guard that allows them to train in the Green Mountains).
But culturally, he found that there are barriers that no product of compatible landscape can overcome. A resistance in Vermont’s educational system to manual labor and earlier-than- “normal” professionalization amount to some “cultural challenges” in trying to warm Vermont to a European system, Gold said.
“We didn’t have any hopes that we were going to put anything like that system in place,” Gold said. “But we just thought, maybe we can adapt something from it.”
Still, two decades ago, he found it hard to gain traction.
“The Austrians, like the Germans, have this history of wanting everything neat and square, you know?” Gold said. “And the Swiss, the same way. Notorious for it right?”
But in a state shot through with “rugged individualism,” Vermonters “aren’t so much like that,” Gold said.
‘I’m doing what I’m doing at 23’
A younger generation, however, could be redefining that spirit. Individualism looks different in a state plagued by huge student debt payments and record high housing costs.
Josh Levasseur administers the G.S. Precision School of Manufacturing Technology, a collaboration launched more than a decade ago between Brattleboro-based G.S. Precision Manufacturing, which makes tools for the aerospace and defense industries, and Vermont Technical College.
He’s a bright spot in a general downturn for manufacturing. Around 28,500 Vermonters worked in manufacturing last year, compared with more than 46,000 at the start of the millennium, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“I feel like every blue collar profession is slowly dissipating, which is unfortunate because they can be great career paths,” he said.
The school, started in 2013, is currently educating its sixth class of apprentices, and allows them to work 32-hours per week while studying for an associate’s degree. Classes are held onsite at the facility.
At 19, Levasseur graduated from the program himself.
“I never thought I was going to be doing something like this when I was younger,” he said. “I used to work on lawn mowers, do pulley swaps to make them go fast, stuff like that. But up until my senior year of high school, I thought I was going to be a linesman.”
Now, after having worked for G.S. Precision Manufacturing in high school through a career and tech education program, Levasseur has been employed by the company for six years and is a certified aerospace engineer.
“I’m someone who went through high school, didn’t go to any formal college, but now have zero debt and I’m doing what I’m doing at 23,” he said. “It can be a very fast path.”
For Snow, the water system apprentice, on-the-job education is a natural fit. “I’m more of a hands-on learner,” he said.
And he’s had his hands full.
The water system in Richmond has weathered three major floods in the past year-and-a-half, with water from a swollen Winooski River backing up into effluent pipes and threatening to compromise the entire operation — which Snow and team lovingly refer to, in all its complexities (a labyrinth of different rooms, labs, containment pits), as “Baxter.”
Silt from the river flows into the plant and “pretty much washes out the system,” Snow said.
But in the most recent flood this summer, they were able to apply the lessons from their previous trials, avoid winding up in a bucket loader and keep the system online.
The job is “lab work, wrench work, muscle work, mechanical work, electrical work,” Snow said. It’s also math work. The rural water association offers him individual tutoring, so he can feel prepared to take the certification tests (which are administered in a hangar at the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport).
So every now and then, he and his apprenticeship mentor — a woman named Paula, who Snow says is “kick ass” — slink away from the bustle of the water department and head up to Richmond Town Hall. They find a quiet corner and hit the books.
This story was produced with funding from the Higher Education Media Fellowship at the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. The fellowship supports new reporting on issues related to postsecondary career and technical education.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Freshly energized apprenticeship programs take on new industries.