Sweden never got an apprentice law after apprenticeship was de-regulated in 1864. This has been attributed to unified opposition to legislation from industry employers and trade unions, with the craft employers as the only advocates. Analysing the pattern of agreement and disagreement in the political struggle over apprenticeship in the Swedish case in 1890–1917, it is clear that opposition was not that uniform, nor was the support from the craft employers that undivided. This article makes use of Kathleen Thelen’s model of institutional change in order to shed new light on the developments in Sweden. The model states that any apprentice law requires a coalition of two or more out of the state, the crafts and the metalworking industries – divided into employers and workers. Legislation, in turn, is a near requirement for the survival of strong apprenticeship. In this article the Swedish case will be discussed in relation to two of Thelen’s cases, Germany and Great Britain. In Germany an apprentice law was passed in 1897, while in Great Britain no modern apprentice law was ever passed. Similarities can be found between both of these cases and the Swedish case.

At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, apprentice training was frequently debated in Sweden, just as in many other parts of Europe. This study analyses the economic perceptions of apprenticeship in the Swedish debate. Economic theories of apprenticeship, from Becker's human capital concept to institutional theories, are used as a point of comparison. How the contemporary actors understood the economics of apprenticeship helps us understand the conditions of Swedish post-guild apprenticeship. The analysis reveals similarities between the contemporary description and the economic theories of on-the-job training, as well as historically specific aspects of the perceptions of the economics of apprenticeship. Both in the economic theories and in the turn-of-the-century debate, the problems plaguing apprenticeship tie in to the question of whether or not there was a sufficient level of training from a societal perspective, or if there was underinvestment. This, in turn, leads to the question of the need for state intervention to correct a potential market failure. At the time, the perceived problems of apprenticeship were used as justification for a proposed apprentice law, which was never passed, and limited state financial support for training that was instituted in 1917.