"With new technology transforming work across a range of sectors, more and more businesses are struggling to find workers with the skills to man new machines and manage new processes."
How would apprenticeship explain why a 40 year old German machinist is more likely to be employed than a 40 year old American machinist?
There are many people, in the USA, who are in their 40s and 50s and who are unemployed. Apprenticeship, in its traditional form, would not help them.
There is another way to look at this, which is to say that the German economy is really weak, but the weakness of the economy was hidden by the introduction of the euro, and the irresponsible lending that German banks engaged in, which allowed an unsustainable debt-fueled bubble to appear in Southern Europe, which created a huge market for German capital goods, which gave Germany a big export surplus. Consider the summary that Paul Krugman gives of Wolfgang Münchau description of the situation:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/german-weakness/
Germany came out the big winner of the euro, therefore its export industry is strong, therefore industry can still engage in long-term investments in its workers, and the labor unions in Germany are very strong, so they can force corporations to spend on training programs. All of which helps. But the roots of German success, in 2014, originate with the great financial changes of the last 25 years, and that success makes German's training programs look great. But to suggest that Germany does a good job training its workers, and therefore the Germany economy is strong, is probably wrong on at least 2 counts:
1.) it probably reverses cause and effect
2.) the German economy is not really strong