Free HR calculator
Apprentice ROI Calculator
Put honest numbers on the apprentice question. Enter your wage scale, your estimate of how much of a journeyman’s output an apprentice produces each year, and the mentor time it takes. You see what the apprentice costs against the work they return, year by year, next to the cost of hiring a journeyman outright.
Before you start
What you will need. Journeyman hourly wage, Apprentice hourly wage, year one, Apprentice hourly wage, final year, Program length (years)
Your wage scale
Your estimates
Advanced options
Assumptions
Net training investment over the program
Year by year
The method
How the apprentice ROI math works
An apprentice is an investment with a shape. At the start you pay more than you get back. At the end you get back more than you pay. This calculator makes the shape visible. Each year it adds up the apprentice’s loaded cost, wages plus burden plus the mentor time that comes out of a journeyman’s production. It compares that to the value of the apprentice’s output, measured against the loaded cost of a journeyman hour at the productivity share you estimate.
How this is calculated
The early years are the investment
A first year apprentice at 60% output costs more than the work returns, and the mentor line widens the gap. Every teaching hour is a journeyman hour not producing. That gap is not waste. It is the price of building a journeyman. The point of the calculator is to know the price in advance instead of discovering it on the job.
The back end is the payoff
As wages step up on your scale and productivity climbs toward journeyman level, the yearly gap narrows and flips. The payback continues past the program, and the retention odds are on your side. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that about 91% of apprenticeship graduates retain employment. Compare that finished journeyman to the alternative of recruiting one. Industry estimates commonly run 15,000 to 25,000 dollars per skilled replacement, when a candidate can be found at all.
Where the model is honest about its limits
The productivity percentages are yours, and the result moves with them. The model assumes a straight line from the year one figure to the final year figure, which is close enough for planning. It does not price the harder benefits to measure. Those are a deeper bench, a culture that grows its own people, and the recruiting pipeline an apprenticeship creates. If anything the result understates the case.
Carry this into the decision
Keep the technicians you train
The Technician Pay and Retention Toolkit builds the pay progression and retention plan that protects the apprenticeship investment this calculator measures.
$69. 30 days. Reply to your receipt or email support@truestephr.com for a full refund. No form or explanation is required, and you keep the files.
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Put your own numbers in and read the result on screen.
Put your own numbers in and read the result on screen.
This tool estimates from the figures you enter. It is general information rather than legal, tax, or accounting advice, so check the result against your own records before you rely on it.