85% of Good Jobs Will Go to Workers with Some Form of Postsecondary Education or Training by 2031, Georgetown University Report Says
July 29 2024 - 11:01PM
Economic opportunity will increasingly favor workers with higher
levels of education and training, according to a new report from
the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
(CEW) supported by JPMorganChase. While there will be good jobs on
every educational pathway in 2031, only 15% will be available to
workers on the high school pathway, compared to 66% on the
bachelor's degree pathway and 19% on the middle-skills pathway.
The Future of Good Jobs: Projections through 2031 is based on
CEW’s projections of all jobs (After Everything, 2023) and
forecasts the share and number of good jobs in 2031 for workers
ages 25–64 by 22 occupational groups and three educational pathways
(bachelor’s, middle-skills, and high school). CEW defines a good
job as one that pays, nationally, a minimum of $43,000 to workers
ages 25–44, a minimum of $55,000 to workers ages 45–64, and a
median of $82,000 for all good jobs.
“We are going through a time of major economic change that
carries both promise and uncertainty, including retirements of baby
boomers, potential disruptions from generative AI, remaining
inflationary pressures and high interest rates, geopolitical
conflicts, and an unsettled national policy landscape,” said CEW
Director and lead author Jeff Strohl. “The good news, though, is we
foresee substantially more good jobs by 2031, spurred by greater
productivity enabled by new technologies, stronger growth among
high-skill/high-wage occupations, and continued political pressure
on policymakers to deliver on job quality for workers, not just low
unemployment.”
To help workers make decisions that maximize their likelihood of
securing a good job, The Future of Good Jobs introduces the concept
of promising occupations for workers on each educational pathway.
To be considered promising, an occupation must be forecasted to
employ a greater share of workers on a given educational pathway
relative to the overall economy. Additionally, the majority of jobs
forecasted to be available to workers on a given educational
pathway in the occupational group must be good jobs in 2031. The
bachelor’s degree pathway will offer 10 promising occupational
groups, the middle-skills pathway will offer five, while the high
school pathway will offer just one.
As demand for more education and skills increases, upskilling
will continue to be evident through both increasing demand for
higher-skilled workers within occupations and the faster growth of
occupations that demand workers with higher levels of education.
These dynamics will continue to shift opportunity to the bachelor’s
degree and middle-skills pathway. By 2031, only 36% of all jobs on
the high school pathway will be good compared to 79% on the
bachelor's degree pathway and 52% on the middle-skills pathway.
The managerial and professional office occupations will be the
largest source of good jobs in 2031—accounting for nearly a third
of all good jobs—and 84% of good managerial and professional office
jobs will be on the bachelor’s degree pathway. Other significant
sources of good jobs on the bachelor’s degree pathway include these
occupational groups: education, training and library; healthcare
professional and technical; and computer and mathematical
science.
Meanwhile, the middle-skills pathway will offer a variety of
good jobs, including many in blue-collar occupational groups such
as construction and extraction and production, healthcare
professional and technical, and protective services occupations.
The blue-collar good job opportunities on the middle-skills pathway
will be bolstered in part by federal infrastructure investments of
recent years.
“Several trends point to a more favorable market for
middle-skills workers relative to the previous decades: slower
labor force growth, fewer college graduates, federal investments in
infrastructure and innovation, and generative AI capabilities,
allowing businesses to hire middle-skills workers for roles that
previously required more education,” said Artem Gulish, senior
federal policy advisor and co-author.
In contrast, ten out of the 22 occupational groups will see net
declines in good jobs on the high school pathway, even as many of
these same occupations will see growth in the numbers of good jobs
on the bachelor’s degree and middle-skills pathways. The
construction and extraction occupational group is a prime example
of this upskilling dynamic. In 2021, high school-educated workers
had the largest share of good jobs in the construction and
extraction occupational group. However, between 2021 and 2031,
construction and extraction occupations will add 893,000 net new
good jobs on the middle-skills pathway, while the number of good
jobs on the high school pathway in these occupations will decline
by 421,000.
“While the value of college faces growing skepticism, our report
affirms that the bachelor’s degree pathway will be the dominant
route to a good job in 2031, with a majority of good jobs
forecasted to lie on the bachelor’s degree pathway,” said Catherine
Morris, report co-author and senior writer/editor at CEW. “While
the middle-skills pathway offers new opportunities, we still see
the bachelor’s degree and middle-skills pathways as complements,
not substitutes.”
To view the full report, including a detailed overview of
promising occupations on each educational pathway, visit:
https://cew.georgetown.edu/goodjobsprojections2031.
The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
(CEW) is a research and policy institute within Georgetown's
McCourt School of Public Policy that studies the links between
education, career qualifications, and workforce demands. For more
information, visit https://cew.georgetown.edu/. Follow CEW on X
@GeorgetownCEW, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Medium.
Katherine Hazelrigg
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
202.510.8269
kh1213@georgetown.edu