By 2031, 85% of jobs that pay a living wage or more will be held by workers with at least a four-year college degree, according to a new report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. The number of those higher-wage jobs—defined as paying a minimum of $43,000 per year and a median of $74,000 for workers ages 25–44, and $55,000 yearly minimum and $91,000 median for ages 45–64 in 2022 dollars—will grow by over 20% from 2021 to 2031.
In the report, CEW researchers look at jobs across 22 occupational groups for workers through three educational pathways: a high school diploma; a “middle skills” pathway for workers with associate’s degrees, certifications, or some college credit; and a pathway for those with a bachelor’s degree or more.
Each pathway leads to jobs offering at least a living wage, but by 2031, 15% of those positions will be on the high school diploma pathway, 19% on the middle-skills pathway, and 66% on the bachelor’s degree pathway. “[A] bachelor’s degree should not be—and is not—the only path to an attractive career,” the report says. However, the number of jobs held by workers with at least a bachelor’s degree will increase by over 15 million net new positions, totalling 58.2 million jobs, compared to an increase of nearly new 160,000 in middle-skill jobs, and a decrease of nearly 600,000 jobs on the high school pathway. An estimated 79% of high-wage positions will go to workers with at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 52% of those jobs on the middle skills pathway and 36% of all positions for workers with a high school diploma or less.
“[E]ven though blue-collar occupations will offer the best path to a [living-wage or well-paying] job for high-school educated workers, the majority of blue-collar jobs on the high school pathway will be low-wage,” the report says
Living-wage occupations favoring workers with training, education
Many living-wage jobs of the future will entail upskilling—the acquisition of new and updated skills through training and development programs—and favor workers with more postsecondary training. Ten of the 22 occupational groups will see declines in the supply of jobs offering a living wage on the high school diploma pathway, even as those same occupations more often see growth in opportunities for middle-skills workers and workers with at least a bachelor’s degree. Managerial and professional office positions will be the largest source of living-wage jobs. Those positions, along with jobs in education, computer and mathematical science, and health care, will account for the largest shares of well-paying jobs for workers with bachelor’s degrees through 2031. “Prospects for workers with middle-skills education and training are more mixed,” the report says.
Construction and extraction, health care, and computer and mathematical science will have the highest number of well-paying jobs for middle-skilled workers, but there will be a decrease in those jobs in management, sales, and business and financial operations for those workers. Construction and extraction will remain the greatest source of jobs offering at least a living wage for workers with a high school diploma or less, though those positions will decrease through 2031 as those jobs transition to specialized positions held by middle-skilled workers.
To widen access to well-paying jobs across these occupations, leaders must work to put bachelor’s degree programs within reach for low-income families, CEW researchers say. Community colleges and local companies can also prepare middle-skilled workers by designing high-quality training for in-demand jobs.
“Educational institutions need to be thinking about costs—particularly at the four-year level—to make it more viable for more students to attend without fully burdensome debt,” Catherine Morris, senior editor and writer at Georgetown CEW and report co-author, tells Higher Ed Dive.