A student stands at a forked path leading toward a bright star, with a college arch and open door in the background. — North Carolina is building earlier pathways into college and careers, with students starting training while still in high school.

For hundreds of North Carolina teenagers, summer break looked less like time away from school and more like an early start on a career.

More than 500 high school students completed pre-apprenticeship or youth apprenticeship programs across the state this summer, working in fields that included electrical trades, advanced manufacturing, agriculture, biotechnology, construction, information technology and health care.

Some earned college credit. Others completed industry credentials, trained alongside employers or collected pay while learning. And in several programs, finishing high school is no longer the point at which career training begins.

The effort is part of a broader push to connect students with employers and community colleges while they are still teenagers, particularly in industries struggling to find enough skilled workers.

North Carolina’s latest apprenticeship results show how quickly that model is expanding. Since 2024, the state’s NC Career Launch initiative has supported 1,067 students completing youth apprenticeships across 48 counties, working with more than 165 employers.

Electrical work became one of the biggest pipelines

The largest new program this summer focused on a trade facing particularly strong demand.

North Carolina launched 12 Careers Electric summer academies at community colleges around the state, enrolling 220 high school students in intensive electrical training.

Students combined community college classes with hands-on work, employer experience and industry-recognized credentials. Participants completed registered pre-apprenticeships, and the program was offered at no cost to the students.

Each graduate was also eligible for a $2,000 completion stipend.

The academies operated through Blue Ridge, Central Carolina, Central Piedmont, Cleveland, Forsyth Tech, Isothermal, Pitt, Rockingham, Surry, Vance-Granville, Wake Tech and Wayne community colleges.

The program is part of a larger effort backed by a $9.5 million Siemens Foundation investment aimed at training 25,000 people for electrical careers in North Carolina over 10 years.

Now it is getting another expansion.

The BlackRock Foundation has awarded $1 million to extend Careers Electric into eastern North Carolina and increase access to the summer academy model elsewhere in the state. More sites are planned for 2027.

The worker shortage behind the experiment

North Carolina has a practical reason to get teenagers interested in electrical work early.

The state expects employment for electricians to rise from about 25,800 jobs in 2024 to more than 28,500 by 2034. More than 70,000 North Carolina jobs already require electrical knowledge across occupations that include electricians, power-line installers, telecommunications technicians, engineers and repair workers.

The pressure is not unique to North Carolina.

Nationwide, employment of electricians is projected to grow 9% from 2025 through 2035, much faster than the overall labor market. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects about 72,700 electrician openings each year over the decade, many of them created as existing workers retire or leave the occupation.

The median annual wage for electricians was $63,190 in May 2025. Most enter the field through an apprenticeship rather than a four-year degree. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects continued strong demand through the next decade.

North Carolina faces an additional challenge: the average age of a licensed electrician in the state is in the upper 50s. That puts a large part of the current workforce within sight of retirement just as construction, manufacturing, energy and technology projects create additional demand for electrical skills.

It is not only about electricians

The state’s summer experiment reached considerably beyond the trades.

Sixty-four students participated in advanced manufacturing and agriculture academies at James Sprunt, Lenoir, Sampson, Wayne and Wilson community colleges. They completed college coursework while training in machining labs, working at farms and agribusinesses and visiting employers.

Another 13 students participated in a 140-hour BioWork pre-apprenticeship developed for rising high school seniors and recent graduates on the autism spectrum.

The program, operated with Johnston Community College and Durham Technical Community College, teaches skills used in biotechnology, pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing. Students completing it can move toward a registered apprenticeship or continue into an associate or bachelor’s degree program.

More than 200 additional students participated in locally designed apprenticeship programs in Burke, Carteret, Columbus, Forsyth, Haywood, Surry, Wake and Wayne counties, entering fields including construction, information technology and health care.

Taken together, the programs resemble less a traditional summer-school system than an early labor market: students begin building skills, employer relationships and credentials before they receive their high school diplomas.

Health care is moving in the same direction

North Carolina is also testing whether apprenticeship can help relieve one of its hardest workforce problems.

More than 400 people completed nursing pre-apprenticeships or apprenticeships during the past year, while nearly 20 new nursing programs were added around the state. The goal is to begin recruiting and preparing future health-care workers while some are still in high school.

The model has also entered state government.

This summer, North Carolina launched STEP-NC, its first registered health-care apprenticeship program within state government. Six recent high school graduates from Burke County trained at Broughton Hospital and the J. Iverson Riddle Developmental Center in behavioral health and maintenance pathways.

Four of the six planned to remain in Burke County and move into registered apprenticeships after completing the summer program.

A different route after high school

For decades, the transition from high school into work has often been presented as a fairly simple choice: attend college or find a job.

Apprenticeships blur that line.

A student can work, earn money, receive technical instruction, accumulate college credit and pursue an industry credential at the same time. Registered apprenticeships combine paid on-the-job training with classroom instruction, often through community or technical colleges.

North Carolina formalized statewide standards for registered pre-apprenticeship programs earlier this year. Programs must prepare participants for registered apprenticeships, connect with an existing apprenticeship program and include both work-based learning and related instruction.

The state’s NC Career Launch program is also receiving federal workforce funding intended to help employers create more youth apprenticeships and provide financial support for participating employers and students.

The result is an increasingly deliberate pipeline: high school, pre-apprenticeship, registered apprenticeship and, potentially, a permanent job.

Whether that system can scale to tens of thousands of students remains an open question. So does whether students who complete the programs ultimately stay in the occupations they trained for.

But North Carolina has already moved beyond treating career exposure as a field trip or a weeklong summer program.

For a growing number of students, the first step into the workforce is happening before graduation.