Women’s Work
Growth in Women's College Attainment Will Drive Blue-Collar Labor Shortages
The strong growth in college attainment among women is good news. It will also exacerbate labor shortages for blue-collar and manual services work – particularly in jobs traditionally held by women.
Read our analysis of the economic impacts of this trends in our latest report from BGI Chief Economist Gad Levanon and BGI Economist Frank Steemers.
It’s well known that the US working-age population is currently barely growing and that this trend will likely continue atleast over the next decade. There are barely enough young people to replace the large baby-boomer cohort that is now retiring.
However, less well reported is how trends in educational attainment will cause labor shortages to be more severe inblue-collar and manual services jobs. While the number of working-age people with a bachelor's degree is solidly and uninterruptedly growing at about 2% annually, the working-age population without a college degree has been shrinkingat about -0.5% annually for a decade.
On top of that, and perhaps more significantly, is showing that this decline is much more dramatic for women than formen, because the increase in college attainment has been much greater for women. These trends are expected tocontinue over the next decade.
