Spotlight: New Research on Labor Misalignment
With the start of a new school year, students across the country will enroll in certificate and associate’s degree programs to learn new skills and prepare for careers. The timing also coincides with the release of ETA’s updated Sector Strategies Framework (2024), a guide to help workforce system practitioners build talent pipelines that are responsive to industry needs. One core component of this framework is data-informed decision making, which raises an interesting question for newly enrolled students: What do the data say about how well their training and credentials align with employers’ demand for labor?
Contributor
Ian Page is a supervisory data scientist in the Office of Policy Development and Research, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor.
Editor
Kyle DeMaria is a workforce analyst and presidential management fellow in the Office of Policy Development and Research, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor.
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Researchers at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce recently published a report entitled The Great Misalignment. In it, they compare the conferral of certificates and associate’s degrees to projected demand for middle-skills occupations accessible with these credentials. While they do not capture the full universe of training providers — something we discuss below — their research is a first step to understanding geographically and occupationally where unmet labor demand may exist in the U.S. economy.
To measure credential conferral, the researchers used data from the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). While IPEDS is a rich data source, only training providers that participate in federal student financial aid programs are required to submit data. This is not an examination of ETA programs specifically because many training opportunities from ETA’s Eligible Training Provider List, Job Corps campuses, and registered apprenticeships may not be included in the analysis.
Middle-Skills Alignment Across Occupational Clusters
Researchers compared the conferral of middle-skills credentials to the projected number of jobs in middle-skills occupations. They found unmet demand in sales/office support, blue-collar, and food/personal services occupations. For example, nationally, only 12% of certificates and associate’s degrees prepared workers for blue-collar jobs, whereas 23% of middle-skills jobs are projected to be in blue-collar professions like truck driving, material moving, and maintenance. In contrast, 10% of credentials and associate’s degrees prepared graduates for work in education, while only 3% of middle-skills jobs will be in education.
Another important discovery was that 28% of certificates and associate’s degrees conferred had no direct match to an occupational cluster. While this may pose a challenge for graduates seeking immediate employment opportunities, 42% of graduates of these liberal arts or general studies programs transferred to a four-year institution in six years.
An important caveat is that this research does not represent the full universe of credential production. Because most training through WIOA is for blue-collar and health care occupations, the inclusion of ETP data might serve to reduce the gap observed for blue-collar work.
Credentials conferred and projected job openings
Source: Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce (2024), The Great Misalignment
Credential Misalignment Across Local Labor Markets
In the figure, darker blue shades indicate a higher degree of misalignment between middle-skills credentials and labor market needs. Lighter blue indicates a lower degree of misalignment. In the Savannah, GA area — with one of the lowest misalignment scores nationally — only about a quarter (23%) of middle-skills credentials would need to be realigned to match the distribution of labor demand. No strong patterns of misalignment immediately emerge across regions. Even within a single state, one local labor market may exhibit a high degree of misalignment (≥70%) while another exhibits low misalignment (≤30%). To explore the data for your region, check out The Great Misalignment data tool.
Projected misalignment by local labor market
Source: Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce (2024), The Great Misalignment
The Urban-Rural Divide
When reviewing the differences in the number of IPEDS training providers, a divide across urban and rural labor markets is immediately apparent. Very few postsecondary institutions provided middle-skills certificates or associate’s degrees in rural areas. On average, rural areas were served by two or three postsecondary institutions. Very urban areas, on the other hand, had 26 on average. It is possible that this gap might change if the data were expanded to include training providers not included in IPEDS. However, given the considerable gap between urban and rural areas, it is likely that a divide would persist even if training providers not captured in IPEDS were included.
Providers in urban and rural markets
Note: Labor markets are considered “very rural” if at least 75 percent of residents live in a rural part of the labor market, “somewhat rural” if between 50 percent and less than 75 percent live in a rural area, “somewhat urban” if between 50 percent and less than 75 percent live in an urban area, and “very urban” if at least 75 percent live in an urban area.
Source: Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce (2024), The Great Misalignment
Labor Market Metrics
Suggested Citation
Kyle DeMaria (ed.), Ian Page, “Spotlight: New Research on Labor Misalignment,” Trendlines, U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration, September 2024, https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/opder/DASP/Trendlines/posts/2024_09/Trendlines_September_2024.html