Research

Selected research published by the Burning Glass Institute independently or in partnership with other leading workforce innovation and higher education organizations

Shifting Skills, Moving Targets, and Remaking the Workforce
Matt Sigelman Matt Sigelman

Shifting Skills, Moving Targets, and Remaking the Workforce

Our analysis of 15 million job postings illuminates the future of work

Discussions about the job market usually focus on jobs created and destroyed. But even in the most tumultuous times, that is not what most workers or most business experience. Jobs do come and go, but even more significantly, jobs change. For the vast majority of workers, their job is much less likely to go away than to evolve into something new…

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The Through-the-Looking-Glass Recovery
Matt Sigelman Matt Sigelman

The Through-the-Looking-Glass Recovery

New, complex dynamics in the U.S. Economy suggest that employment in some industries won’t come back from the pandemic.

New, complex dynamics in the U.S. Economy suggest that employment in some industries won’t come back from the pandemic.

A permanent shake-up of U.S. industries is underway. While the economy sustained massive, near-instantaneous employment loss in the early days of the pandemic, the job market has now returned to 99% of is prior strength after just two years, far faster than the job market recovered from past shocks. But the economy we have returned to usn’t the same as the one we left behind…

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HBR:  Skills-Based Hiring Is on the Rise
Matt Sigelman Matt Sigelman

HBR: Skills-Based Hiring Is on the Rise

Two decades ago, companies began adding degree requirements to job descriptions, even though the jobs themselves hadn’t changed. After the Great Recession, many organizations began trying to back away from those requirements.

To learn how the effort is going, the authors studied more than 50 million recent job announcements. The bottom line: Many companies are moving away from degree requirements and toward skills-based hiring, especially in middle-skill jobs, which good for both workers and employers. But more work remains to be done.

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The Emerging Degree Reset
Matt Sigelman Matt Sigelman

The Emerging Degree Reset

Employers are resetting degree requirements in a wide range of roles, dropping the requirement for a bachelor’s degree in many middle-skill and even some higher skill roles. Based on these trends, we project that an additional 1.4 million jobs could open to workers without college degrees over the next five years.

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Dynamos for Diversity
Matt Sigelman Matt Sigelman

Dynamos for Diversity

For higher education to live up to its diversity imperative, universities need to go beyond an exclusive focus on enrollment numbers and bring more attention to outcomes – both for existing students and for the broader community of learners they’ve been missing.

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