January 28, 2013
U. S. Adult Literacy Surplus Continues to Grow
Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
The headline from the online version of USA TODAY for January 28, 2013 reads: “Study: Nearly half are overqualified for their jobs.”
The article goes on to state: quote”Nearly half of working Americans with college degrees are in jobs for which they're overqualified, a new study out Monday suggests. The study, released by the non-profit Center for College Affordability and Productivity, says the trend is likely to continue for newly minted college graduates over the next decade.”end quote
The article quotes the study’s director as saying, quote”...the problem is the stock of college graduates in the workforce (41.7 million) in 2010 was larger than the number of jobs requiring a college degree (28.6 million). That, he says, helps explain why 15% of taxi drivers in 2010 had bachelor's degrees vs. 1% in 1970. Among retail sales clerks, 25% had a bachelor's degree in 2010. Less than 5% did in 1970...."There are going to be an awful lot of disappointed people because a lot of them are going to end up as janitors,... In 2010, 5% of janitors, 115,520 workers, had bachelor's degrees, his data show.“end quote
This new report is consistent with a trend which I have reported upon for the last decade and a half. In a 1998 report entitled Beyond 2000:Future Directions for Adult Education, I presented research from the Hudson Institute suggesting that the literacy skills of the U.S. workforce may exceed the literacy demands of the workplace creating a sort of "literacy surplus." A couple of years later, in a research note I posted 8/9/00 to the National Literacy Advocates (NLA) online discussion list I summarized a growing body of studies that supported the ideas of an over supply of adults with literacy skills suited for most work in the U.S. and a growing oversuppy of adults with postsecondary education degrees. I quoted from a note from the Director of the Division of Adult Education and Literacy in the federal government stating: QUOTE "Jobs requiring an associate's degree or higher account for… just 16% of actual job openings, … Meanwhile, nearly one third of 25-29 year-olds attain bachelor's or associate's degrees and will compete for those jobs." UNQUOTE
On 7/14/2006 I posted a message on the aaace-nla online discussion list in which I reported on work by the the Economic Policy Institute (EPI-www.epi.org), a progressive organization, presents a weekly "snapshot" designed to illustrate important economic issues. The snapshot for February 22, 2006 is headlined," Earnings premium for skilled workers down sharply in recent years." It goes on to say, "It is conventional wisdom that earnings have grown faster for college graduates than for high-school graduates. This long-term wage trend has led economists to conclude that the skill demands of American employers have outpaced the supply of skilled workers in the U.S. labor market, thus demonstrating a shortage of college-educated workers."
The "snapshot" then goes on to question this conclusion and presents data indicating that "Since 2000, the real earnings of college-educated workers (those with bachelor's degrees) have fallen quite steeply, while
the earnings of high-school graduates have gone up." This suggests to the EPI authors that "since 2000, the supply of college graduates (typically labeled "skilled workers" in this debate) has grown faster
than employers' need for them, and that the supply of high-school graduates ("less-skilled workers") has not kept up with demand. Obviously, such a trend undermines claims that it's the skill level of U.S. workers that is the chief factor behind the growth in inequality." They go on to say, "policy makers and "futurists" predicting a shortage of skilled labor need to be aware of this reversal in the college premium, especially
since it contradicts their explanation of evolving skill demands."
In a more recent research note of January 16, 2013, Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute wrote a note entitled: “Workers don’t lack skills, they lack work”. She writes: quote”Unemployment is high not because workers lack the right education or skills, but because employers have not seen demand for their goods and services pick up enough to need to significantly ramp up hiring. It is not the right workers we are lacking, it is work.”end quote
In overview, most of the foregoing is consistent with the USA TODAY article of 1/28/13 cited above, and suggests a continued movement toward a workforce with education qualifications and corresponding skills beyond what most jobs require, at least at the present time. Interestingly, in June 2010, the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University reported that by 2018 some 63 percent of jobs would require workers with some college education. However, it appears that presently there are enough students in the pipeline flowing toward a college degree and many college graduates already in the workforce that there is no evidence that the U.S. will find itself short of qualified workers five years from now in 2018. And indeed, based on the past evidence, we may anticipate that there will be an even larger surplus of literacy skills and college graduates working in jobs for which they are overqualified.