Keeping pace with the needs of a skilled workforce

If the U.S. is going to continue to compete globally and win on innovation, more workers will have to attain credentials allowing them to keep pace with the demands of the shifting workforce, say several recent reports. However, only a quarter of the states have more than 50 percent of their prime working age population attaining some kind of credential beyond high school according to a new study from the Lumina Foundation. A new Brookings analysis finds that 15 percent of young people are “disconnected,” meaning they do not have a job and are not in school. To meet the demands that the work of the future will entail, Lumina advocates that 60 percent of those aged 25 to 64 have some credential beyond high school by 2025 (the current national average is 46.9 percent).

In A Stronger Nation, Lumina asserts the nation faces an urgent and growing need for talent, and that the majority of jobs created since the Great Recession require education beyond high school. While past generations were capable of reaching the middle class with a high school education or less, today millions of jobs have been replaced by technology or global competition and those that remain demand higher level skills, Lumina posits. The educational attainment percentages they use reflect both degrees and workforce-relevant certificates.

Since they began tracking the attainment of post-secondary credentials of Americans in 2008, they have found a 9 percentage point increase, and they note 41 states have set attainment goals. Their report breaks down the attainment level by state and while none have reached 60 percent attainment, Massachusetts is close with 56.2 percent. In fact, 12 states show more than 50 percent of their working age population reaching an educational attainment beyond high school. Another 33 states are between 41 and 50 percent, and five states are between 30 and 40 percent.

But even the increase Lumina found is uneven across racial and ethnic groups. “In our society, where real opportunity depends on learning beyond high school, these persistent inequities harm us all as Americans,” the report states. Education beyond high school is the key to increasing opportunity, the reports states, and to get to a 60 percent attainment goal, the authors assert that “we must close gaps by race, ethnicity, income, and immigration status.” With 80 percent of Americans living in cities or suburbs, the authors state that these regions should be the focus of efforts to increase the educational attainment, not just because they hold the most people but also because metro areas are “fertile ground for the kinds of local collaborations that boost attainment.”

Brookings reports that among 18 to 24 year olds, almost half (48 percent) are not in school and 15 percent are neither in school nor have a job. While 33 percent of that age group are working, only 20 percent of them has an associate’s or bachelor’s degree and 17 percent of all young adults are working with a high school degree as their highest level of academic achievement. While young people that are working may not see a need to pursue a higher education, that “holds back not only their individual progress in the labor market but that of wider regional economies; well-paying jobs requiring higher levels of education are unlikely to locate and grow in places absent people with the skills to fill them,” according to Brookings.

To help ease the transition from high school to post-secondary education and ultimately, the labor market, Brookings recommends strategies including stronger high school advising; dual enrollment programs; creating stronger pathway into the labor market through work-based learning in high school or apprenticeships; and making reforms within community colleges to increase graduation rates.