Youth Apprenticeship for Employers

Youth Apprenticeships are the ideal vehicle to teach young adults job-ready skills through mentorship while providing quality education and creating productive, lifelong learners.

• Career-Oriented: Learning is structured around knowledge, skills, and competencies that lead to careers with family-supporting wages.
• Equitable: Learning is accessible to every student, with targeted support for those adversely impacted by long-standing inequities in our education system and labor market.
• Portable: Learning leads to postsecondary credentials and transferable college credit that expand options for students.
• Adaptable: Learning is designed collaboratively to be recognized and valued across an industry or sector.
• Accountable: Student, employer, and program outcomes are monitored using transparent metrics to support improvement.

Automation technicians repair and maintain the computer-controlled systems and robotic devices used within industrial and commercial facilities to reduce human intervention and maximize efficiency.

Automation Technicians can work in a variety of fields such as food processing, aerospace, maritime manufacturing, biomedical manufacturing, defense, space, and packaging and assembly. Their duties require knowledge of electronics, mechanics, pneumatics and computers.

The job duties of a Production Technician is to set up, test, and adjust advanced manufacturing machinery or equipment; specifically manual and/or CNC mills and lathes.

Production Technicians will work hands-on interpreting technical drawings and operating mills/lathes to produce a finished product. 

Youth apprentices are allowed to work in prohibited occupations because they meet the criteria of “student learner”. A youth apprentice must meet all the following criteria:

1. They are enrolled in a state approved youth apprenticeship program.
2. They are enrolled in school and receive school credit for program participation.
3. They receive appropriate safety instruction at the school and at the workplace.
4. The work performed is under direct supervision of a qualified and experienced employee.
5. The work performed in any work process that is declared hazardous is incidental to their training AND is for intermittent and short periods of time.
6. There is a schedule of work processes to be performed on the job that may vary by employer.

Additionally, should you choose to participate in the Youth Apprenticeship Program, the same provisions apply for workers’ compensation coverage for the youth apprentice.