What jobs require: literacy, education, and training, 1940-2006

This report aims to generalise the literacy, education, and training requirements of the US workforce, as well as to project these requirements into the near future. It assembles the available information on past and future trends in employment and on the educational requirements of jobs in the US during the post-World War II period. Data is drawn from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Census, and the National Adult Literacy Study (NALS). The first section of this report explains what is known from NALS 1992. Also drawing on BLS/Census data, it describes employment trends in 1986, 1996, and projected to 2006, in terms of the literacy requirements of jobs. It examines the most rapidly growing and declining occupations, the occupations with the highest and lowest literacy requirements, and the average for all employment in those years. This is followed by a presentation of data on employment/training requirements for occupations. The final section traces trends from the post-World War II period to the 1980s. Show less