Feature Story

June 4, 2007

Can California Import Enough College Graduates to Meet Workforce Needs?

From: Public Policy Institute of California:

This brief by the Public Policy Institute of California examines the potential crisis of whether California will have enough highly educated workers to meet the rising demands of the economy in the coming decades. Included in the brief: recent trends on international and domestic migration of college grads, demographic projections (age and race/ethnicity, percentage of adults with a college degree), wages and educational attainment, supply and demand of jobs, and more.

Selected Findings:

* By 2025, about 40% of all jobs in California will require a college degree, up from about 30% in 2005.

* In the years between 1995 to 2005, one million adults 20 to 64 who did not have a college degree migrated out of California, while at the same time the state gained a little less than 100,000 college graduates from other parts of the U.S..

* Over the next 20 years, the number of jobs requiring no college degrees are predicted to grow less than 10%, while jobs requiring a graduate degree are expected to grow by 68% , and jobs requiring a Bachelor's should increase by 78%.

* If current trends continue, the percentage of Latino college graduates ages 25-64 will increase only 3 percentage points from 2005 to 2025 (from 10% to 13%), while the percentage of African Americans ages 25-64 graduating college will remain the same (at 22%).

* The health and education service industries are predicted to be the most important growth industries in California in the next couple of decades growing to a little over 13% of all jobs by 2025. In 2025, 54% of jobs in these industries would require a college degree.

Thanks to the United Way of Greater Los Angeles for highlighting this listing.