New Report: How US employers and educators can build a more nimble education system with multiple paths to success
As baby boomers retire, digitalization expands, wages rise, and the job market remains strong, American employers are feeling a serious pinch for talent. For example, Cyberseek, a project funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, notes, “From February 2023 through January 2024, there were only 82 cybersecurity workers available for every 100 cybersecurity jobs demanded by employers.” Given the acute nature of the problem, near-term solutions such as removing degree requirements for jobs and instead hiring people based on their skills are gaining momentum. Not surprisingly, as employers rely less exclusively on traditional college degrees for hiring, more young Americans question whether a college degree is still worth it. Both employers and students see a gaping disconnect between the outcomes of the education and training provided in the U.S. and the types of skills and experience that employers value.
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A growing chasm between the education system and labor markets in the U.S. is making it harder for employers to find and retain qualified talent, and it also is stunting the career and education options available for Americans without a college degree. Minor tweaks will not address the scale of the chasm. If the country seeks to activate more of its homegrown talent to continue innovating and competing on a global scale, it will need an all-hands-on-deck approach to be successful. Incentivizing and empowering employers to be more active in the education system is a critical first step toward achieving quality work-based learning at the necessary scale. The U.S. must re-engineer its systems so that more employers are incentivized and empowered to do this.
This report maps out a new role for employers in the U.S. education and training systems. It starts from the employer perspective to identify enabling policies and infrastructure. We draw from promising practices in several states and countries that are leading the way in aligning education and employment systems. Brookings Metro has convened teams of leaders in education, commerce, economic development, and workforce development for over two years in three states—Alabama, Indiana, and Colorado—to understand their work on scaling earn-and-learn opportunities. Insights from this community of practice have informed this report as well.
We envision an education system that employers will partner more closely with, instead of distancing themselves from. With tight labor markets and changing skill needs, many employers are already rethinking their approach to human resources (HR), internal staff development, talent sourcing, and the time horizons for these interventions. We argue that opportunities to learn on-the-job and to have that learning recognized for credit and credentialing—whether through an entry-level program like apprenticeships or professional development to support career advancement—must be scaled to meet the demands of today’s labor market. To do this in a federated system like the U.S., states are well-positioned to take the lead in building the infrastructure and policies that would enable this transformation to a system with multiple pathways, in which employers have an active and ongoing responsibility to design, deliver, and assess the training that happens in their own workplaces.
