Construction apprenticeships accounted for 53% of all registered apprentices in the St. Louis Fed’s seven-state district in 2025, and the bank’s new analysis says the sector led growth through two economic recoveries. The same data show the system’s weak spot: fewer than half of apprentices nationally finish.
The analysis, posted Oct. 8 on the bank’s On the Economy blog by community development researcher Nishesh Chalise, uses annual records from RAPIDS, the federal registered apprenticeship database. It compares the decade after the Great Recession, 2009 to 2019, with the COVID-19 recovery from 2021 to 2025.
Construction Apprenticeships Kept Climbing
Active apprentices nationally grew 21% from 2009 to 2019 and 26% from 2021 to 2025. The second gain came in less than half the time. Annualized, that’s roughly 1.9% a year in the first expansion and about 5.9% in the second, by Exchange’s math.
The Eighth District covers all of Arkansas and parts of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, and it mostly beat the national pace. After COVID, every district state but Indiana outran the national rate, and all but Illinois and Indiana grew 35% or more. In 2019, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri each had more than 15,000 active apprentices. Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee had about 6,000 apiece.
Recessions hit first, though. Five of the seven states lost active apprentices from 2008 to 2009, and Arkansas dropped 31%.
Construction and extraction occupations grew steadily in both periods. Other fields didn’t hold their gains. Computer and math apprenticeships fell almost 60% from 2021 to 2025 after strong growth the decade before, and architecture and engineering slipped too. That leaves construction carrying more of the model than it used to.
Completion Is the Apprenticeship Problem
The national registered apprenticeship completion rate was 46% in 2024. District states ranged from 33% in Mississippi to 58% in Illinois. For comparison, the six-year completion rate in postsecondary education is 61%. An apprenticeship is supposed to be the more direct path to a paycheck, and more than half of starters don’t finish one.
Chalise cites a research review putting employer returns at $1.32 to $2.49 for every dollar invested, measured five years after completion. That math only works on apprentices who complete. It’s why low completion and thin employer buy-in are the two hurdles the analysis flags for future growth. Incentives are aimed at the second. The American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund pays $3,500 per apprentice who finishes.
What the Apprenticeship Data Mean for Contractors
The numbers fit what the industry has been saying for years. NCCER’s latest workforce report repeated fixes first proposed in 2018, as Exchange covered last week, and the Labor Department’s $65 million community college round put construction first on its target list. The St. Louis data suggest getting people in the door isn’t the main bottleneck. Getting them to journeyman is.
Caveats apply. This is a regional blog post, not a peer-reviewed study. RAPIDS counts only registered programs, so informal company training won’t show up, and the two growth periods aren’t the same length. Still, the core figure is hard to argue with. In a district where construction is 53% of apprentices, the national finish rate is 46 out of 100.