The economics of apprenticeship training: Seven lessons learned from cost-benefit surveys and simulations

This text summarises the seven most important findings that have been gleaned using detailed cost-benefit surveys of apprenticeship training programmes in various countries and subsequent cost-benefit simulations for other countries over the last 20 years. The costs incurred by the firms providing training were measured, as were the benefits they can generate in the short term through the apprentices’ work in the company and the medium- term benefits obtained because apprenticeship programs help companies avoid costly recruitment from the labour market. These surveys and simulations mainly concern European countries. However, they have also been applied to non-European countries.1 Specifically, the following statements refer to cost-benefit surveys from Switzerland, Germany and Austria and cost-benefit simulations run for England, Italy and Spain. The cost-benefit measurements in the three German- speaking countries were also used for comparative studies, i.e. studies that investigated the causes and effects of the differences in the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training in the three countries (see point 2). The findings we draw from the cost-benefit measurements and the corresponding simulations are summarized in seven lesson