What the US can learn from Switzerland about the business case for apprenticeships

In June and July 2025, over 70 U.S. leaders and organizations, including Brookings, traveled to Switzerland for a Summer Institute at ETH Zürich, a top-tier research university. Our goal was to see firsthand what makes apprenticeships work at scale in Switzerland, a country widely regarded as having the “gold standard” of apprenticeship systems. Apprenticeships there are part of the secondary education system, combining classroom learning with paid on-the-job training, typically lasting three to four years.

In the U.S., however, apprenticeships have been challenging to scale, and increasing employer participation is one of the most significant barriers. Employers new to apprenticeships often ask, “What’s the return on investment?”

To answer that question and others, Brookings led a small delegation of employer-serving organizations and philanthropy leaders focused on understanding the business case for apprenticeships. About 60% of Swiss employers break even or turn a profit by the end of the apprenticeship, with an average return on investment (ROI) of around 8%. We sought to examine not just what the Swiss are doing differently, but also why the country’s apprenticeship model works for employers at scale. Here’s what we learned.

Five takeaways from the Swiss apprenticeship model

First, having 16-year-old apprentices is key to the value proposition. Swiss apprentices are seen as well-paid learners, not low-paid workers. Starting around age 16, most apprentices live with their parents and have little or no work experience. Polymechanic apprentices start at about $730 to $1,159 (in U.S. dollars) per month in the first year, earning more as they progress. Upon completion, they earn around $6,259 per month if they transition into a professional employee as a polymechanic. This large wage jump creates powerful incentives to complete the program, although pay varies considerably by occupation (for example, comparing a polymechanic technician with a commercial apprentice in a supermarket). Lower apprentice wages offset the higher supervisory time initially required, making the economics sustainable for employers.

Second, high participation and consistency reduce friction. Everyone in Switzerland knows what apprenticeship means. About 70% of Swiss youth choose to apprentice and roughly 29% of firms train apprentices. There are national standards for 240-plus professions (occupations), which bring consistency and transparency—every apprentice and employer knows what is expected and what they will receive in return. Employer associations play an active role in developing the curricula with educators and update content regularly. But although there are national standards, there is also flexibility regarding how employers participate and how apprentices learn the required competencies. For example, the Baselland Chamber of Commerce offers compliance, matching, and quality-monitoring services for a fee to its members, lowering administrative burdens for small and medium-sized businesses. These standards create clarity and shared understanding; flexibility ensures feasibility.

Third, permeability and rigor make apprenticeships appealing for firms, youth, and their families. Firms such as Swisscom, a telecommunications company, have competitive acceptance rates of 4% to 5%, comparable to Harvard University. The high status of apprenticeships is achieved because of national standards, being employer-driven (see the next paragraph), and the fact that there are no dead ends. Apprentices can advance to academic universities, applied universities, or professional education and training programs after completion. This combination of rigor, status, choice, and pay appeals to youth and their families. Meanwhile, employers gain access to a larger pool of qualified workers with the fundamental competencies that they need—even if trained elsewhere. In Switzerland, Summer Institute participants were blown away when a 16-year-old banking apprentice said he helps customers apply for mortgages. Apprenticeships in Switzerland are a strategic talent acquisition solution for employers.

Fourth, employer associations don’t just advise apprenticeship standards, but actively shape them. Employers have legal authority to shape the curricula for each profession through multi-employer associations, ensuring alignment with actual needs. Because employers have real authority to shape what apprentices learn, they derive more value from training apprentices. This formal quality-assurance role makes collaboration with other employers worthwhile and allows employers to join an existing system rather than building programs from scratch.

Finally, most Swiss firms break even before training ends. The average Swiss firm recovers its investment before the end of the apprenticeship. Although somewhat dated now, data from 2014 suggest that about 60% of Swiss firms have a positive ROI at completion, compared to 30% in Germany and 35% in Austria. The evidence suggests that this is largely because Swiss employers put apprentices into productive work more often, as opposed to practice exercises.

Recommendations for US leaders on apprenticeships

Both ecosystem and program design factors can improve employers’ ROI for apprenticeships—factors policymakers, employers, and program designers have some control over. Ecosystem factors include government funding for classroom instruction, multi-employer associations, intermediaries that reduce costs, and formalizing apprenticeships within the education system to ensure opportunities for advancement (aka “permeability”). High participation across society creates awareness and familiarity, reinforcing the system. Without these supports, U.S. employers face higher costs and greater risk.

The question isn’t whether apprenticeships work—it’s how the U.S. can build shared infrastructure and program designs to distribute costs and balance stakeholders needs. A forthcoming Brookings report will more closely examine what we know about the business case for apprenticeships in the U.S., but our trip to Switzerland taught us that system-level infrastructure enables the positive outcomes employers there achieve.

Scaling apprenticeships requires both coordination across stakeholder groups and action within each domain. Below are some specific lessons from our trip to Switzerland for key decisionmakers.

For policymakers:

• Fund intermediaries to reduce administrative burdens, identify candidates, and provide other supports to employers, educators, and apprentices.
• Provide formula funding for related instruction to shift the cost burden for foundational training away from employers.
• Ensure multi-employer associations have real authority to design curricula and assessments with educators.
• Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor should establish a system of national definitions and competency standards by occupation that empowers employers and educators to co-develop and update competencies, including a balance of standard learning levels and definitions at the national level and state-level competencies within that framework. 

For employer-serving intermediaries:

• Listen to employers’ talent challenges before pitching apprenticeships; understand their problems and whether apprenticeships are the right solution.
• Develop and regularly update competency frameworks and learning assessments with employers and education partners.
• Build shared services for small and medium-sized businesses such as employer-of-record services, pooled apprentice cohorts for courses, shared curricula and assessments, and training supervisors.

For employers:

• Shift from firm-level to occupation-level thinking; collaborate with competitors to grow qualified talent pools.
• Engage in competency framework development when associations convene employers.
• Frame apprentices as learners, not cheap labor; provide structured training with clear progressions and well-trained supervisors; and get apprentices into productive work quickly.
• Share program data as well as costs and benefits data to build collective knowledge about what works.

For researchers:

• Prioritize qualitative research over premature quantitative ROI studies; understand employer decisionmaking before imposing metrics.
• Focus on conditions that enable positive ROI, not just aggregate outcomes.
• Develop occupation-specific frameworks, recognizing that apprenticeships in health care occupations differ from apprenticeships in manufacturing occupations, for example.

The bottom line

Switzerland showed us that employer participation in apprenticeships at scale requires shared infrastructure and effective program design—not heroics or corporate social responsibility. These were intentional design decisions Switzerland made, many of which were implemented over the last 30 years. The question for the U.S. isn’t whether to copy Switzerland’s model—it’s whether we’ll invest in the shared infrastructure that makes sustainable employer participation possible. This question is especially pertinent as major changes in federal funding and the Department of Education continue to unfold.

This post draws on insights from delegations to Switzerland in June and July 2025 as well as a forthcoming Brookings report.