Did You Know: Employers are Fighting Another Form of Inflation
For decades, the four-year degree was considered the best pathway to the middle class. Today, workers and employers increasingly recognize that not possessing a college degree can be a barrier to opportunity for many workers.
Currently, 70 million workers do not possess a college degree. Over the past three decades, non-grads have largely lost ground in the labor force. The unemployment rate for those with less than a high school diploma is 5.8 percent and 3.6 percent of high school graduates. Their labor force participation rates are just 48.3 percent and 56 percent, respectively. Comparatively, 3.2 percent of workers with some college or associate degree and just 2 percent of college graduates are unemployed. Their labor force participation rates are 63.6 percent and a significant 72 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is suffering from a severe worker shortage. Currently, 5.9 million people are unemployed despite there being 10.8 million open positions. The national unemployment rate is 3.6 percent, and the labor force participation rate stands at 62.5 percent, below pre-pandemic levels and pre-Great Recession levels.
A degree also fails to be a reliable signal of job readiness or to serve as a proxy for a desired skillset. The private and public sectors are fighting back against “degree inflation” to expand employment opportunities to more Americans.
Millions of non-college-educated people could be gainfully employed in upwardly mobile careers, but degree requirements stand in their way. Others could be trained to obtain desired skills without ever needing to step onto a college campus.
Today, there is a severe shortage of middle-wage workers due to the degree gap. Only about a third of the adult population possesses a college degree, but millions of jobs require a college diploma. As a result, people are stagnant in roles or excluded from middle-skill, middle-wage jobs that lead to middle-class lifestyles and upward mobility.
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