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Conventional wisdom holds that recent college graduates have a harder time finding jobs today than in the past. But a new approach to assessing job suitability suggests otherwise. To bridge the chasm between competing viewpoints on college's utility, this study uses statistical and earnings tests to measure how many college graduates were overqualified for their positions. The approach can be applied in different years to identify whether an occupation is a good fit for a college-educated worker based on each year's conditions. By using this technique, the author finds a higher percentage of college-educated workers in good-fit jobs than other approaches do.

All occupations can be divided into good-fit bachelor of arts (BA) jobs and overqualified BA jobs. In 1980, 39 per cent of employment was good-fit, but this figure rose to 45 per cent in 2014. Several external factors affected the rising level of education-based earnings inequality during this time. The share was 24 per cent in 1980, when many new college-educated baby boomers entered the labor force. After declining to 21 per cent at the end of the Clinton boom in 2000, it rose during the economic troubles sparked by the 2008 financial crisis and reached 25 per cent in 2015.

Edited excerpts from publisher's website. Show less

The commonly used figure to describe the gender wage ratio in the US - that a woman earns 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man - understates the pay inequality problem by leaving many women workers out of the picture. This report argues that a multi-year analysis provides a more comprehensive picture of the gender wage gap and presents a more accurate measure of the income women actually bring home to support themselves and their families. The analysis reported here uses 45 years of data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID), a nationally representative dataset that follows the same individuals and families across many years, to develop a more comprehensive view of women's and men's working lives and to calculate long-term earnings gaps for three 15-year periods: 1968-1982, 1983-1997, and 2001-2015, which includes the most recent year available. All women and men who had at least one year with positive earnings in any period are included in the study.

With data that cover nearly 50 years (1968-2015), this report shows that women have made significant progress in narrowing the gender gaps in years of work, working hours per year, and wages per hour, all cumulating in narrowing the gap in annual earnings and total earnings across 15 years. The data also show that, despite considerable progress, two in five women workers in the most recent period still do not maintain strong labor force attachment. Strengthening women's labor force participation would increase their long-term and lifetime earnings.

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This report explores the crucial transformation of the United States from an industrial to a post-industrial economy, with a particular focus on the shifting skill levels and incomes of American workers. It shows the increasing value of postsecondary education in today's economy and examines how workers have fared as the nation's focus has shifted from manufacturing to the delivery of services like healthcare, education, and finance and business services. These shifts have created millions of high-skill professional jobs and increased the economic value of obtaining a college degree. The report finds that college-educated workers now produce more than half of the nation's annual economic value. The findings undermine the fear that good manufacturing jobs of the past are being replaced with low-paid, dead-end service jobs.

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This study is on the skill requirements needed in a changing economy. These new labour needs are based on changes in the way goods and services are produced and in the composition of the consumers' final demand. By focusing on what people actually do instead of what industry they work for, the authors have developed a new functional category that combines all the activities of administration, coordination and promotion into a broad new category - the office. The body of this document defines and describes the new office economy. The conclusion considers the implications for society and educators.

This executive summary is part of a larger technical report by the same name. Show less

This report highlights the findings of a study that shows that the US has been underproducing college-educated workers for decades and that the undersupply of postsecondary-educated workers has led to problems of efficiency and equity. The authors argue that to correct this undersupply and meet the efficiency and equity goals, an additional 20 million postsecondary-educated workers will need to be added to the economy by 2025. The arguments are presented in five sections: the first section tracks the evolution of increasing educational attainment in the US and in other countries around the world and provides an overview of the data that demonstrate that other countries have accepted that economic growth has been tied to rising educational levels; the second section documents the change in the supply and demand of college-educated workers from 1915 to 2005 and assesses and confirms the consensus economic interpretation of the rise of the Bachelor’s degree to high school wage premium from 1980 to 2005 that suggests that there has been an undersupply of college graduates; section three shows how this rising Bachelor’s degree premium has led to a sharp, distressing rise in inequality and discusses the positive effects of increased postsecondary attainment on wages and inequality and that attaining the goal of 20 million additional workers with postsecondary education will help reverse the growth of income inequality; section four addresses the arguments that the US has too many college graduates today, arguing that neither the historical earnings data nor future projections of postsecondary demand support the notion that college workers are oversupplied; and the final section details calculations regarding how many additional college graduates are needed between now and 2025 to meet the rising demand for college-educated workers and to meet a target Bachelor’s degree to high school wage ratio that will result in a more shared prosperity. Show less

In this report, the authors examine what a college degree is worth, and what else besides a degree might influence an individual's potential earnings. This report examines lifetime earnings for all education levels and earnings by occupation, age, race/ethnicity and gender. The data are clear: a college degree is key to economic opportunity, conferring substantially higher earnings on those with credentials than those without.

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With certificate attainment at an all time high, this report examines who earns certificates, where they are earning them, and the earnings return of certificates.

Abstract from National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) website. Show less