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Sonderling on Newsmax: 390,000 New Apprentices and the Push Toward One Million Registered Apprenticeships

September 14, 2026 · USDepartmentofLabor · 0:04:00

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What happened

Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling spoke with Newsmax in an interview the Department of Labor described as aired April 30, 2026 and posted September 14, 2026, according to the department’s recording, rendered in Arabic-rendered auto-captions and paraphrased here. Asked about the Federal Reserve declining to cut interest rates, Sonderling said President Trump has been clear that rates should come down, and that from the Labor Department’s side, jobs, manufacturing, industry and technology are returning. He expressed confidence that the incoming Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Warsh, would make the right decision once in place, as he stated his expectation.

Sonderling said the department was celebrating National Apprenticeship Week and described registered apprenticeships as the fastest, debt-free route to bring skilled Americans into the workforce, with employers rather than academic institutions setting the curricula. He said President Trump’s executive order in his first 100 days set a goal of one million new registered apprenticeships, and that since the start of the administration 390,000 new apprentices and 3,300 new programs have been registered, figures he cited in the interview. He said the average annual pay for registered apprentices is $86,000, as the host noted and he affirmed.

Sonderling said apprenticeships apply across the trades, technology and finance, not only office or manual work, and that the department marked the week with nearly 3,000 events nationwide to connect workers with rewarding jobs and skills, including the plumbers and electricians needed for AI data centers raised by the host.

Why it matters

The apprenticeship numbers are the Labor Department’s progress markers against the President’s one-million goal, and Sonderling’s framing of registered apprenticeships as employer-led and debt-free is the workforce model the administration is scaling instead of college-first pathways.

Sources: USDepartmentofLabor, “Secretary Keith Sonderling speaks with Newsmax on the economy”, 2026-09-14 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-09-14). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.