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Dive Summary:
- The number of Good jobs will grow substantially by 2031, with most of them requiring at least a four-year degree, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce predicted in a new report Tuesday.
- Researchers expect the number of good jobs for workers with a college degree or higher to increase by more than 15 million between 2021 and 2031, according to the report. It defines good jobs as those offering a minimum of $43,000 per year and a median annual wage of $74,000 in 2022 dollars for workers ages 25 to 44.
- Meanwhile, the center predicted that good jobs available to workers with a high school diploma or less will decline by nearly 600,000 over that period.
Dive information:
The report outlines three pathways to good jobs: one for workers with a high school diploma or less, one for those who completed some college credits, a short-term program, or an associate degree, and one for graduates of bachelor’s degree programs and above.
Researchers offer an optimistic outlook for the American workforce, estimating that 62% of jobs in 2031 will meet the criteria to be considered good jobs. That would represent an increase of 3 percentage points from 2021.
According to Artem Gulish, senior federal policy adviser at Georgetown CEW and co-author of the report, most of the good jobs of the future are found at the end of the bachelor’s degree.
“Bachelor’s and graduate degrees will continue to dominate and even grow in the future,” he said. By 2031, two-thirds of all good jobs will require a four-year degree or higher, compared with 59% in 2021.
According to Georgetown CEW, about 8 out of 10 jobs that require at least a bachelor’s degree will be rated as good.
Half of the jobs available to workers with more than a high school degree but less than a bachelor’s degree (described in the report as falling into the “middle skills” pathway) will meet CEW’s earnings thresholds for good jobs. That will be true for just over a third of positions for those with a high school diploma or less.
The report offers universities a way to underscore their value at a time when one-third of American adults say they have little or no confidence in higher education.
However, institutions should still expect to have to increase their financial accessibility.
“Educational institutions need to think about costs, particularly at the four-year level, to make it more feasible for more students to attend without taking on too much debt,” said Catherine Morris, senior editor and writer for Georgetown CEW and co-author of the report.
Workers in the “middle skills” pathway can expect to see new job opportunities open up as skills-based hiring gains popularity, the report said.
Labor shortages have forced employers to prioritize job candidates’ skills over certifications and to remove four-year college degree requirements from some job postings. The projected slow growth in the number of workers could accentuate these trends.
While good jobs will continue to favor workers with at least a bachelor’s degree, 19% of good jobs in 2031—about 16.4 million positions—will be available through the middle-skills pathway.
“The occupation is important in terms of the career you’re going to pursue,” Morris said. “A generic associate’s degree may not have the same benefits as in other fields, but there are certainly opportunities in the middle-skills field that are, in some cases, more affordable than a four-year degree.”
According to the report, sectors such as healthcare will see particularly strong growth as the population ages. Other fields with demand for middle-skilled workers will include construction, maintenance, and protective services.
Technological advances such as artificial intelligence are expected to disrupt the labor market shortly, the report said, but it predicts the effects will be more positive in the long term.
“History shows that these kinds of new technologies often create more jobs than they destroy,” Gulish said. “In the long term, companies will need help implementing things like AI.”
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