The United States economy will face a gap of nearly 5 million college-educated workers by 2032, according to new research from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.
“Without massive and immediate increases in educational attainment, 171 occupations of the 561 we analyzed will face skills shortages through 2032,” said Nicole Smith, lead author and chief economist at the center at Georgetown.
As nearly 14 million young workers enter the labor market with postsecondary education, it won’t be enough to fill the gap of the over 18 million retiring from 2024 to 2032, according to the center.
At the same time, an additional 685,000 new jobs with postsecondary education requirements will be added.
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The center at Georgetown University projects that the country will need an additional 5.25 million workers with postsecondary education through 2032 — 4.5 million of which will need a bachelor’s degree or higher.
The professions that will be most impacted by the shortage of workers will be: accountants, attorneys, construction workers, doctors, engineers, managers, nurses, teachers and truck drivers, according to the center.
The shortfall includes:
2.9 million management positions (including CEOs, construction managers, facilities managers, financial managers, general and operations managers and sales managers)
611,000 teachers
402,000 truck drivers
362,000 nurse practitioners and registered nurses
210,000 engineers
200,000 construction workers
42,000 licensed practical nurses
“Not enough young people are both qualified and interested in these careers. In addition, there is tremendous political pressure to reduce immigration, despite the fact that the U.S. has increasingly relied on immigrants to fill advanced technical occupations. Current initiatives aimed at bolstering the engineering workforce aren’t keeping pace with these trends,” Smith said.
The researchers said that reducing the unemployment rate and increasing the labor-force participation rate to where it was in 2000 would help address the workforce shortages.
While that would far exceed the gaps, increasing the workforce by 12 million people, more than half of the potential workers would still need education or training beyond high school.