The Brief

California is just starting a statewide effort to create apprenticeship opportunities for young people, ages 16 through 24, as college becomes less affordable for many high school graduates and other costs of living are rising.

But the program has run into a funding snag. Gov. Gavin Newsom, trying to plug a budget hole that some officials say could be $78 billion, now plans to delay $25 million in next year’s funding — about how much the state is spending this year on the effort.

This could be a setback for a new system that funds apprenticeships strictly for young people. Currently most apprentices are older than college age — the nationwide average age of an apprentice is 29 — and most apprenticeship programs feed into the construction trades.

State officials think much younger people should be tapping into this system.

“Not everybody can afford to go onto college, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not bright, hard working people,” said Adele Burnes, deputy chief of the state’s Division of Apprenticeship Standards. “It just means they may not be able to afford to not be earning.

“We as a state want to make sure we’re creating onramps into careers … that offer them that pathway into a family-sustaining wage.”

Those who complete apprenticeships can earn starting salaries of $77,000, and their average lifetime earnings could outpace their peers’ by more than $300,000, according to research by Jobs for the Future, a national organization that promotes workforce development.

Last July the Legislature tasked the Division of Apprenticeship Standards with gathering data and developing a system for allocating money to groups that operate youth apprenticeship programs.

Organizations have until March 15 to apply for funding.

Defining youth apprenticeship

The Division of Apprenticeship Standards has established grants for organizations that develop pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs targeting the state’s 500,000 “opportunity youth” — young people who have dropped out or are at risk of dropping out of school, or who come from low-income families or neighborhoods, or are involved in the foster care, child welfare or juvenile justice systems.

The organizations that receive the grants are expected to develop apprenticeship programs for careers in health care, education, information technology and more.

The effort is in line with Newsom’s stated goal of reaching 500,000 registered apprentices by 2029. So far, the state has about 90,000.

Typically apprenticeship programs are federally registered and involve at least 144 hours of classroom instruction and 2,000 hours of on-the-job work under the supervision of a professional.

Those who complete apprenticeships usually secure union jobs with living wages and benefits, said Taylor White, who helps design youth apprenticeship systems for New America, a national research and advocacy nonprofit.

Historically apprenticeships mostly fed the building and fire trades. Many union jobs require employees to be over 18, White said.

The national decades-long “college for all” push in high schools has steered young people by the droves toward four-year colleges. But college hasn’t worked out equally for everyone.

“That hasn’t necessarily resulted in the closure of the workforce and economic disparities that people expected it would,” White said. It’s now clear that young people need more options, she added.

While various pre-apprenticeship programs in the state prepare young people for apprenticeships, California has yet to create a central youth apprenticeship system to recruit workers who may still be in high school or college.

The state established a Youth Apprenticeship Committee that is expected to provide recommendations to the Division of Apprenticeship Standards in July.

California high school apprenticeships

One example of a new high school apprenticeship program is San Joaquin County’s Apprenticeships Reaching Career Horizons, the first of its kind in the state.

Three of the six young people who started at its beginning in 2020 have since completed the three-year program. To date there have been 25 students in the program, said Pam Knapp, director of college and career readiness at the San Joaquin County Office of Education. Students can train as teaching aids, assistant farm managers or hospitality marketing professionals.

When Catalina Govea, a Linden High senior, applied to the program, she thought she was applying for a summer job. It turned out to be a lot more, she said.

“Once I got the position, I immediately fell in love because I knew I wanted to be a teacher,” Govea said.

High school senior Catalina Govea, 17, part of a youth apprenticeship program, says it has given her management skills and patience she will use in her future career in education. Photo by Manuel Orbegozo for CalMatters

(

Manuel Orbegozo

/

CalMatters

)

Govea works in Linden Elementary classrooms and in afterschool programs as a teacher’s aide, assisting teachers with administrative work and students with assignments and learning about classroom management.

She also takes online college courses on childhood and adolescent development, child discipline and other education topics that will transfer when she starts at Sonoma State University in the fall.

The program, Govea said, has helped her mature and handle stressful classroom environments, experience she might not have otherwise gained until years later.

The experience was “perfect to know what my future would look like,” she said.

Knapp said the apprenticeship program works well because the county Office of Education functions as an intermediary between employers, school districts, and the state Division of Apprenticeship Standards.

But the program has faced challenges convincing enough employers to hire teenagers, she added.

Left and right: Catalina Govea works with students and faculty during school hours and after school as part of a high school apprenticeship program that combines technical instruction with paid work experience on March 5, 2024.

(

Manuel Orbegozo

/

CalMatters

)

There are higher workers compensation rates for workers under 18, so private companies may be hesitant to hire them, Knapp said. And unions representing school workers are hesitant to hire teenagers if those jobs could instead go to union employees, she added.

“That’s been the heavy lift,” Knapp said. “If we want to expand this, then legislatively there needs to be some sort of an incentive, some sort of a tax credit, anything for employers to invest in the youth.”

In the Bay Area, the Construction Trades Workforce Initiative is running its pre-apprenticeship programs as a pipeline for high school students interested in such fields as construction and plumbing.

Beli Achary, the initiative’s executive director, said the program has done a lot of outreach work to educate school counselors and employers about the importance of opening up apprenticeships to youth. The initiative also visits high schools in the Bay Area to inform students about the careers they can explore through apprenticeship programs.

The initiative oversees, funds and authorizes several pre-apprenticeship programs with school districts and juvenile detention centers across the Bay Area. They are in the process of developing programs for at least five more school districts and Laney Community College in Oakland.

“The attitude has shifted and is a lot more positive,” Achary said. “Workforce development is becoming more and more of a buzzword, which is a good thing.”

Ensuring equitable outcomes

Traditional apprenticeships, mostly in the building and fire trades, have skewed white and male.

Across the country, 63% of youth apprenticeships have gone to people who identify as white and 35% to those identifying as nonwhite, according to the Jobs For the Future report, which analyzed data for 2010 through 2020.

Women and girls make up 7% of all youth apprentices nationally.

After an apprenticeship, the average starting wage for youth apprentices was $31 an hour, the study said: white youth earned $29.55, Latino youth earned $32 and Black youth earned $23, it said.

While young men’s pay averaged $13.08 an hour, males who had apprenticeships earned $31 an hour, a 137% boost. For young women, those with apprenticeships earned 42% more than the average, the study said.

The report says occupational segregation is key to starting wage disparities, highlighting the need to recruit to diversify various occupations.

For example, the top occupation for women apprentices was pharmacy technician, which nationally paid $12 an hour. The top occupation for male apprentices was electrician, which paid $26 an hour, according to the report.

“Providing more information and awareness, I think, will be a key part of working through some of those inequities,” said Myriam Sullivan, a researcher on the report. That includes educating employers on how to keep diversity in mind when hiring and informing young people about wages in various career paths.

Sullivan said some of the lack of diversity in apprenticeships may have to do with how they’re funded. Because grants typically incentivize high enrollment, that leaves little room for program leaders to think strategically about hiring diversely, she said.

California’s apprenticeship grant language targets groups that serve youth who are typically shut out of these opportunities, said Burnes, of the state apprenticeship standards division. The state program also tries to ensure organizations can support youth through the completion of their programs.

“What we heard resoundingly was just how important supportive services are to opportunity youth who are trying to get into apprenticeships,” Burnes said. They “face unique life challenges and barriers that might make their success in a program a step harder.”

Eric Morrison-Smith, executive director of the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, a national youth advocacy network which co-sponsored California’s youth apprenticeship legislation, said the priority must be ensuring young workers have more options than they’ve had in the past and building worker power.

“I think the pendulum is shifting a bit,” he said. “Historically the pendulum has leaned heavily on the side of ‘college is the only way to get a good job.’ We believe we need a solid ecosystem of economic opportunity that allows for people to make decisions that will give them more self determination over their lives.”

Morrison-Smith said supporters of the Youth Apprenticeship program are lobbying Senate and Assembly leaders to ensure it remains a priority in budget negotiations.

Big surf from distant hurricanes in the Pacific could bring coastal flooding to Southern California starting this weekend.

Hurricanes Polo and Odalys are expected to cause coastal erosion, flooding and high surf along Southern California's already battered coastline. Swells from Polo are expect to arrive as early as late Sunday and peak Monday and Tuesday.

Bryan Lewis, National Weather Service meteorologist, told LAist that high tides could reach 7 feet. He said Long Beach and Avalon are among the more vulnerable areas for potential flooding and erosion.

Long Beach and Los Angeles warned residents to prepare for potential flooding and other effects through at least Wednesday.

In early September, Hurricane Marie brought coastal erosion and flooding that led homes being red- and yellow-tagged in L.A. and Orange counties.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Friends & Family Flea, a new market from the team behind Maum Market, will make its debut Saturday in Koreatown. 

For organizer Arnold Byun, the launch is something of a homecoming. 

Nearly five years ago, Byun and his co-founder, Kioh Park, were living in Koreatown and spending months at Document Coffee Bar dreaming up what would eventually become Maum Market, the Asian makers market they launched in January 2022. The market now has a regular presence at ROW DTLA, where it hosts pop-up markets on Dock Street several times a year.

“The genesis of Maum Market is actually really embedded in Koreatown,” Byun, 31, told The LA Local. “And we have a lot of affection and personal history with Koreatown, so it’s a very personal thing for us just to return to our roots.” 

Most of the 24 vendors participating in the first Friends & Family Flea have some connection to Koreatown, Byun said. Some grew up in the neighborhood, some still live there and others have moved away but retain ties to the area. The vendor list includes apparel brands, artists, jewelry makers, beauty and wellness businesses and food vendors. 

“We’ve been trying to be pretty intentional about curating from the community as much as possible,” Byun said.

There will be plenty of food and shopping, including “sogeum-bbang,” or salt bread, tea, handmade candles, soaps and vintage clothing, as well as flash tattoos and burgers and fries from Love Hour. The LA Hwatu-Hanafuda Club will teach visitors about hwatu, the Korean deck of playing cards with roots in Japan. The club will also offer $5 tarot card readings.

Friends & Family Flea, a new market from the team behind Maum Market, will make its debut Saturday in Koreatown.

(

Courtesy Eena Cho

)

Eena Cho, founder of the LA Hwatu-Hanafuda Club, was born and raised in Koreatown. She remembers living with her mother in an apartment on Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue and volunteering at the senior center near Seoul International Park, where she spent time with older Korean residents.

She also grew up playing go-stop with her grandparents during Korean holidays, like Chuseok and Seollal. 

“That was a big part of my childhood,” said Cho, 24. “Another part is that living in LA where there’s so many different groups of people together, I remember my best friend Maria growing up, she was Mexican, and we would be playmates because both of our parents were working overtime.”

For Cho, joining Friends & Family Flea felt like a natural fit.

“Koreatown is a beautiful diaspora of many different cultures,” Cho said. “And I think that makes Koreatown, Koreatown.”

Friends & Family Flea, a new market from the team behind Maum Market, will make its debut Saturday in Koreatown.

(

Courtesy Eena Cho

)

The local focus is a big part of what Byun hopes will distinguish Friends & Family from other flea markets and fairs. He said organizers wanted to create something that “intentionally celebrates a specific neighborhood,” in this case, Koreatown. 

For the Koreatown market, that also means highlighting small businesses beyond the restaurants that often get the most attention.

“It’s more about, you know, where do we get our dry cleaning, where do we get our shoes done, or these kinds of services that I think don’t get highlighted as often as maybe restaurants do, but are really core and essential parts of a community business,” Byun said.

Byun’s own history with Koreatown also makes the neighborhood an especially fitting place to start.

His family immigrated to the South Bay from Korea in 2002, when he was 6. He remembers coming to Koreatown with his parents on the weekends for Korean meals and grocery trips.

Byun still thinks of the neighborhood as a second home for Korean immigrants, while appreciating how its community has grown more diverse.

“I’m just really happy to see it become a really beloved neighborhood,” he said.

The market is also giving back locally. Hats sold at the event will benefit the Koreatown Youth and Community Center, Byun said.

And this may not be a one-time run. If Saturday goes well, organizers hope to bring Friends & Family Flea back to Koreatown on a monthly basis. They also plan to offer discounted vendor fees to Koreatown residents.

“I feel like there was so much opportunity for us to really hone in and create something more hyperlocal and also really embed ourselves in the community as well,” Byun said.

When I lived in the UK, I worked on a BBC television show about birding. It was a strange experience as I couldn’t exactly book guests — “Hello Mr. Sparrow, could you be on location for an interview at 2 p.m.?”

So instead I spent a lot of time with the crew climbing up mountains with a large tripod on my shoulder. Did you know there’s a bird in the Scottish Highlands whose plumage turns white in winter to blend in with the snow? (It’s called a ptarmigan. Don’t pronounce the p.)

But it did mean I was attuned to British bird calls. I could hear something and pronounce solemnly: “Ah yes, that’s a lark. And that one's a chaffinch."

Moving to LA meant learning a new set of bird calls

When I moved to the U.S., however, it was a whole other story. I really didn’t recognize any of the bird calls. They were all so different. I just shrugged and figured they were part of the backdrop. But one day recently, a woman told me about a free app and said it was life-changing. "Hmm, I’ll see about that," I thought.

Merlin bird app

It’s called Merlin, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and it’s kind of like Shazam for bird calls. As in, you click it, and it tells you what bird song you can hear around you. When I opened it in my backyard for the first time, a whole orchestra of bird sounds opened up around me. I admit: it was kind of life-changing.

Of course it first picked up a crow, which I know only too well, given its loud, raucous sound. But then it identified a house finch. Huh. Who knew they were in my backyard? And as I listened closely, I realized … I knew that sound! It’s the first thing I hear when I wake up at dawn, lovely and melodic.

The house finch, awakening the day.

(

Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library

)

So now when I open my eyes in the morning, I say, "Good morning, house finch, communing with fellow beings alive on a vibrant California morning!" It kicks off my day, although I guess I’ve been reading too much Mary Oliver.

The backyard birds you're probably hearing right now

But then other birds I didn’t know would pop up on my phone during the day, with names as intriguing as their calls: the spotted towhee, the orange-crowned warbler, or Cassin’s kingbird.

I mean, they do realize they’re in a backyard in Los Angeles, not some estate in Georgian England? My favorite for a while was the dark-eyed junco. Now we’re talking romantic heroes. Imagine him slyly popping across the apple tree limbs to call to you. Dark-Eyed Junco, at your service.

Dark-eyed junco, at your service.

(

Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library

)

Meet Swinhoe's white-eye, a non-native bird spreading across SoCal

And then there’s Swinhoe’s white-eye. Which sounds a little like an eye ailment, but there you go. It’s a tiny bright yellow bird with a white ring around each eye. So cute! I first noticed them when there were a bazillion of them in a tree outside my house. It was such an unusual sight that I mentioned it to a woman walking her dog, and we stood there, oohing and aahing, until we both realized we’d oohed a little too much, and it was time to go.

Swinhoe's white-eyes are not native to SoCal, but are thriving.

(

Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library

)

When I researched them, I was surprised to find they’re not native to SoCal. They’re actually pretty new to the area. There were just a handful in Orange County 20 years ago, probably having been brought over from Asia as pets and escaped. And now, they’re thriving and have spread everywhere from Baja to San Luis Obispo. Who knows where they’ll end up next? If anyone sees a chartreuse cutie in New York, let me know. It'll probably be very tired.

Yes, you can see I’ve become slightly annoying with my newfound bird interest. I’ll be asking my family what they want for dinner, and I’ll say, “Wait, is that the spotted towhee?” and turn to my phone, and my teenager will wrest it out of my hand and say, “Mom, be in the present!” Which is right. But my morning serenade as the birds come online one by one and greet the new day — well, that’s as present as you can be.

Walk through the automatic doors at the Carson Library and you’ll see on your left a 1973 painting called "Dominoes" by John Riddle.

Riddle, a prominent Black artist, has worked in the L.A. County Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, and has been collected by Jesse Jackson and Roberta Flack.

Riddle's work was previously owned by the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in West Adams. Over two decades, the company’s art director, William Pajaud, an L.A. artist himself, carefully collected hundreds of pieces of Black art. Each piece in the collection, Pajaud said, would be a chapter telling the story of African Americans in the U.S. The collection included oil paintings, watercolors, and sculptures in clay, wood and metal.

When Golden State Mutual Life Insurance shut down, the company sold most of the best pieces at a private auction in 2007, with some selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. L.A. County was able to acquire about 120 works, including Riddle's piece.

To keep the works accessible to the public and free of charge, county officials chose four public libraries and three community centers to show the work. Earlier this year, the county arts department created a new website with a map to make them easier to find. The locations include the Golden State Mutual historic building in West Adams, plus:
:

Libraries

• Carson Library (Carson)
• A.C. Bilbrew Library (Willowbrook)
• Masao W. Satow Library (Gardena)
• View Park Bebe Moore Campbell Library (View Park/Windsor Hills)
  

Community centers:

• Curtis Tucker Behavioral Health Center Health Services (Inglewood)
• Willowbrook Senior Center Aging and Disabilities (Willowbrook)
• Mark Ridley-Thomas Behavioral Health Center Health Services (on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Medical Campus).

“All of these are county-owned spaces that are available, accessible to the public and to patrons to be able to live with the works, learn about the works, see the works, learn about the works,” said Kristin Sakoda, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.

Dominoes by John Riddle. The painting was part of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance collection but is now part of the Los Angeles County Civic Art Collection.

(

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

)

As you walk past the checkout desk at the Carson Library, toward the teen section, you’ll see another remarkable piece from the county’s holdings. It’s a two-foot-tall sculpture made from one piece of mahogany. It’s called "The Embrace" by artist Elizabeth Catlett, whose work is in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, among many other institutions. Catlett depicted two people hugging, their faces and bodies fused together, their eyes looking at the viewer.

Detail of El Abrazo (The Embrace) by Elizabeth Catlett.

(

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

)

In the auction catalogue for the Golden State Collection, Catlett wrote: “I still work figuratively, trying to express emotion through abstract form, color, line, and space. I attempt to reach out to ordinary people who have little or no experience or understanding of art principles, and extend to them what I may feel about a subject."

Ancestral Fragments by Stanley Wilson.

(

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

)

Meanwhile at A.C. Bilbrew Library, north of Compton, there’s a piece by Charles White, who lived in L.A. County for decades and mentored many artists in the region. His paintings and drawings in the 1960s took on the issues of the Black Civil Rights Movement, and that led well-known Black Americans like Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt to buy his art.

County officials are hopeful that the communities around these neighborhoods enjoy the art’s benefits, including “mental health, in our education, our youth development, our sense of inclusion and belonging,” Sakoda said.