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To ensure more low- and moderate income families can enjoy pathways into prosperity, it is crucial to identify the economic opportunities available to non-college-educated or middle-skill workers. To this end, this report explores why employer preferences for bachelor's degrees for the most prevalent opportunity occupations vary significantly between metropolitan areas in the US. Opportunity occupations are jobs that pay more than the national median annual wage, as adjusted by local cost of living, and are generally accessible to workers without a college degree. As such, they provide essential opportunities for middle-skill workers to enter the middle class.

The research answers two questions: What characteristics of metropolitan areas are related to employer requirements for college degrees to access select professions? For the four most common opportunity occupations - computer user support specialists, registered nurses, first-line supervisors of retail sales, and executive secretaries - what are the trends in college degree requirements? A key highlight of the research findings is that employers in metropolitan areas with a higher share of recent college graduates in the local labor force, a larger population, higher wages, or those located in the Northeast (as compared to the South) are more likely than others to request a bachelor's degree for these opportunity occupations. As a result, these jobs are less accessible to middle-skill or non-college-educated workers living in these areas resulting in more limited economic opportunity.

Edited excerpts from publisher's website. Show less