Labor Department gets 45 days to approve health care apprenticeships
S. 3364 — Fast Track Healthcare Apprenticeships Act · Filed by Ron Wyden (D-OR) · Introduced Dec 4, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill amends the National Apprenticeship Act to speed up registration of health care apprenticeships by requiring the Department of Labor to decide on applications within 45 days (or explain delays and provide a timeline within 90 days), and to digitize all apprenticeship agreement forms. Health care apprenticeships cover clinical and support occupations as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a procedural fix to apprenticeship registration timelines and form administration under existing law. It does not create new apprenticeships, fund programs, or change eligibility — it streamlines Department of Labor processing for a defined occupational category.
What the text implies
- The 45-day decision timeline may require Department of Labor to hire or reallocate staff to meet the deadline, creating an unfunded mandate if no appropriation accompanies the bill.
- Digitization requirement may impose compliance costs on employers and training providers if they must convert existing paper systems, though the bill does not specify who bears implementation costs.
- The bill defines 'health care field' by reference to Bureau of Labor Statistics classifications, which can change over time — future occupational reclassifications could expand or contract the scope of eligible apprenticeships without further legislative action.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Workers and employers pursuing health care apprenticeships gain faster regulatory approval (45-day timeline vs. undefined delays) and easier access to digital forms, reducing friction in workforce development. No offsetting costs to citizens are apparent from the text.
Named in the bill
Department of Labor, Secretary of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Apprenticeship Act (29 U.S.C. 50 et seq.)
Where it stands
- Dec 4, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Dec 4, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 1 disclosure filings across 1 quarter, Dec 2025 to Dec 2025. Those filings disclosed $110,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 31 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Ron Wyden, the sponsor, reported $375,070 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Sandy Hook Promise Action Fund — $110,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jan 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (2,390 characters) on Jun 3, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Dec 2025. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jan 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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