Workers with 4-year degrees will hold most good jobs in 2031, report predicts

Dive Brief:

• The number of good jobs will grow substantially by 2031, and the majority of them will require at least a four-year degree, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce predicted in a new report Tuesday.
• Researchers expect the number of good jobs for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher to increase by over 15 million from 2021 to 2031, according to the report. It defines good jobs as those offering a minimum of $43,000 per year and a median annual salary of $74,000 in 2022 dollars for workers aged 25 to 44.
• Meanwhile, the center predicted that the good jobs available to workers with a high school diploma or less will decline by almost 600,000 during that period.

Dive Insight:

The report outlines three pathways to good jobs — one for workers with a high school diploma or less, one for those who completed some college credit, a short-term program or an associate degree, and one for graduates of bachelor’s programs and beyond. 

Researchers offer an optimistic outlook for the U.S. workforce, estimating that 62% of positions in 2031 will meet the criteria to be considered good jobs. That would be an increase of 3 percentage points from 2021. 

A majority of the future’s good jobs lie at the end of the bachelor’s degree pathway, according to Artem Gulish, senior federal policy advisor at Georgetown CEW and co-author of the report.

“Bachelor’s and graduate degrees will remain dominant and even grow into the future,” he said. In 2031, two-thirds of all good jobs will require a four-year degree or more, compared with 59% in 2021. 

About 8 out of 10 jobs requiring at least a bachelor’s degree will qualify as good, according to Georgetown CEW. 

Half of the jobs available to workers with more education than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree — described by the report as being on the “middle skills” pathway — will meet CEW’s earning thresholds for good jobs. That will be true for just over a third of positions for those with a high school diploma or less.

The report offers colleges a way to underscore their value at a time when one-third of U.S. adults report having little to no confidence in higher education.

But institutions should still expect to need to increase their financial accessibility.

“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,” said Catherine Morris, senior editor and writer at Georgetown CEW and co-author of the report.

Workers on the “middle-skills” pathway can expect to see new employment opportunities open up as skills-based hiring gains popularity, the report said.

The tight labor market has pushed employers to prioritize candidates’ skills over certifications and remove four-year degree requirements from some job postings. Slow expected growth in the number of workers could further these trends. 

While good jobs will still favor workers with at least a bachelor’s degree, 19% of the good jobs in 2031, about 16.4 million positions, will be available through the middle-skills pathway.

“Occupation matters in terms of what degree pathway you’re going down,” Morris said. “A generic associate’s degree may not have the same returns as in other fields, but there are certainly opportunities on the middle-skills pathway that are, in some cases, more affordable than a four-year degree.”

Sectors like healthcare will see especially robust growth as the population ages, according to the report. Other in-demand fields for middle-skills workers will include construction, maintenance and protective services.

Technological advances like artificial intelligence are expected to disrupt the labor market in the near future, the report said. But it predicts the effects will be more positive in the long-term.

“History shows that these kinds of new technologies generally tend to create more jobs than they destroy,” Gulish said. “Business will need help implementing things like AI in the long run.”