Despite the growing emphasis on non-degree paths, micro-credentials alone won’t make workers as competitive as a bachelor’s degree when it comes to the high-paying jobs of the future.
Technological advances and a shrinking workforce are expected to spur the growth of more than 15 million decent-paying jobs by 2031. But the vast majority of new jobs will require some degree of higher education, with 66 percent requiring at least a bachelor’s degree.
While an increased emphasis on workforce preparation and growing public skepticism about the value of a traditional college degree have led to a boom in micro-credentials, these courses alone will be on par with a high school diploma’s ability to help applicants land a good job. According to a new report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce released Tuesday.
“Our numbers are very clear: Bachelor’s and graduate degrees are going to dominate,” said Artem Gulish, senior federal policy adviser at CEW and co-author of the report. “A lot more of those quantitative and analytical skills will be required. Organizational and business complexities will grow with greater technological capabilities.”
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The report, “The Future of Good Jobs: Projections to 2031,” which was supported by JP MorganChase, defines a “good job” as one that pays a national minimum wage of $43,000 for workers ages 25 to 44 and $55,000 for workers ages 45 to 64. While workers without a college degree will be able to get one of these jobs in the future, the researchers found that it will become increasingly difficult.
The researchers used data from CEW’s 2023 report “After All: Projections for Jobs, Education, and Training Requirements, 2021-2031,” which analyzed macroeconomic factors, changes in occupational structure, and trends in educational distributions within occupations to forecast educational demand through 2031.
The resulting data outlined in Tuesday’s report shows that as technology continues to become more complex, so will the training of workers who need to interact with it on the job.
More specialized jobs
In 2021, 22 percent of good jobs were in middle-skills pathways, which include workers who do not have a four-year college degree but do have a credential such as a certificate, license, or associate degree; by 2031, researchers project that 19 percent of good jobs will require middle skills. For workers with only a high school diploma, the availability of good jobs is expected to decline from 19 percent in 2021 to 15 percent in 2031.
“There are more and more skilled jobs that require some kind of training,” Gulish said, noting that well-paying blue-collar jobs like welding, plumbing, and construction often require some kind of formal training beyond high school. That means that in the 2030s, “there will still be plenty of entry-level construction jobs, but they won’t necessarily be good ones.”
Managerial and professional occupations are projected to add 6.2 million new good jobs through 2031, the most of any sector. However, 84 percent of those white-collar jobs will require at least a bachelor’s degree. Nine in 10 jobs in STEM fields will meet the report’s threshold for being a good job, while health care, education, law, and business are among the 10 occupational fields requiring bachelor’s degrees that researchers identified as “promising” pathways to earning wages that could comfortably support a family.
“We are living through a time of great economic change that brings both promise and uncertainty,” Jeff Strohl, director of CEW and lead author of the report, said in a press release, citing the impending retirement of baby boomers and the “potential disruptions” of generative AI as drivers of that change. One “good news” amid that uncertainty, he said, is the expected “stronger growth” of skilled jobs that pay higher wages.
Compared with those with a college degree or higher, workers with some college but no degree will have access to half as many promising occupations. Many of these opportunities will be more physically demanding, including jobs in construction and extraction, health care, protective technical services, installation, maintenance and repair, and manufacturing.
“While the value of higher education faces growing skepticism, our report argues that college will be the dominant route to a good job by 2031, with the majority of good jobs projected to be in college,” said Catherine Morris, co-author of the report. “While college offers new opportunities, we still view college and intermediate college degrees as complements, not substitutes.”
AWorkerswith only a high school education will have even fewer opportunities than those with intermediate skills; only one of those fields (installation, maintenance, and repair) is likely to lead to good employment by the early 2030s.
The report’s conclusion that a bachelor’s degree will only become more valuable as the 21st century progresses contradicts recent efforts by governments and employers to increase the adoption of non-college pathways, said Shalin Jyotishi, founder and managing director of the Future of Work and the Innovation Economy Initiative at New America, a left-leaning public policy think tank.
Numerous states, including Colorado, Florida, and Maryland, have dropped the four-year degree requirements In recent years, companies have reduced bachelor’s degree requirements for government jobs. By 2023, more than half of companies have also eliminated bachelor’s degree requirements for entry- and mid-level positions. According to a report by Intelligent.com.
“When it comes to many of these short-term training programs, we have seen time and again that they lead to unemployment, underemployment, or employment in poverty-wage jobs if they are the primary mechanism for career readiness,” Jyotishi said. “They are a great tool for upskilling and reskilling, but insufficient for boosting long-term careers.”
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