June 30, 2008 by Emsi Burning Glass
The conventional wisdom is dished out to millions of students every year: You “need” a four-year degree in order to get a good job. However, with employers begging for more skilled (but not necessarily university-educated) workers, and with many bachelor’s grads finding themselves with few job prospects and a mountain of student loans, workforce and education professionals have begun to take issue with the common wisdom. Instead, they’re focusing on badly-needed “middle-skill” jobs—that is, jobs requiring some postsecondary education or training, but not a 4-year degree. An excellent overview of the issues can be found in the report “America’s Forgotten Middle-Skill Jobs,” produced by Skills2Compete and the Urban Institute.
So what are the most plentiful and well-paid “middle-skill” jobs? Using EMSI’s Strategic Advantage, we were able to get the answer in minutes. Starting with occupations having an average education level no higher than an associate’s degree, we filtered out those having hourly earnings lower than $25 and ranked the remaining occupations by estimated job openings (new plus replacement jobs) over the next five years.
Occupation | 2007 – 2012 Est. Job Openings | Median Hourly Earnings | Average Education Level |
Registered nurses | 546,000 | $28 | Associate’s |
First-line supervisors/managers of construction trades and extraction workers | 99,000 | $26 | Experience in field |
First-line supervisors/managers of mechanics, installers, and repairers | 81,000 | $26 | Experience in field |
Sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing, technical and scientific products | 77,000 | $31 | Moderate-term on-the-job training |
Managers, all other | 55,000 | $40 | Experience in field |
Cost estimators | 52,000 | $25 | Experience in field |
Dental hygienists | 46,000 | $30 | Associate’s |
Computer specialists, all other | 45,000 | $33 | Associate’s |
First-line supervisors/managers of non-retail sales workers | 35,000 | $32 | Experience in field |
Industrial production managers | 33,000 | $37 | Experience in field |
These numbers offer some valuable insights into America’s best middle-skill job market:
We’ve seen that most of the top middle-skill jobs require experience in the field. But what about jobs for recent high school graduates who don’t have years of experience? Using our criterion of $25/hour or higher earnings, they are harder to find. But if we lower the cutoff to $20/hour (equivalent to almost $42,000/year), more possibilities open up:
Occupation | 2007 – 2012 Est. Job Openings | Median Hourly Earnings | Average Education Level |
Sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing, except technical and scientific products | 268,000 | $24 | Moderate-term on-the-job training |
Police and sheriff’s patrol officers | 148,000 | $23 | Long-term on-the-job training |
Sales representatives, services, all other | 142,000 | $23 | Moderate-term on-the-job training |
Electricians | 136,000 | $21 | Long-term on-the-job training |
Plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters | 96,000 | $21 | Long-term on-the-job training |
Postal service mail carriers | 58,000 | $21 | Short-term on-the-job training |
Claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators | 52,000 | $24 | Long-term on-the-job training |
Paralegals and legal assistants | 47,000 | $21 | Associate’s |
Radiologic technologists and technicians | 33,000 | $23 | Associate’s |
Advertising sales agents | 32,000 | $21 | Moderate-term on-the-job training |
Still, high school grads should not expect to just walk into these jobs, especially at the given earnings levels. All except mail carriers require a two-year degree or significant on-the-job training. Some (especially electricians and plumbers) may use apprenticeships combined with classroom work, and increasingly, community colleges are offering degrees or certificates for jobs that once only required on-the-job training. Certificates from industry groups can also be highly desirable. For more information about education and training trends for specific jobs, you can consult the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook.
After crunching the numbers for middle-skill jobs, it is clear that high-paying, middle-skill jobs are plentiful in a diverse array of fields. However, nearly all require some kind of training and/or education beyond high school. This means that for the majority of today’s youth, the two years immediately after high school will be crucial for making transitions into college, career/tech training, and workplace training such as apprenticeships and internships.