Due to new jobs and continuing retirements among Baby Boomers, 55 million new job openings will be created between now and 2020, but the economy will fall short 5 million workers with the postsecondary degrees those jobs require.
So says a new study released Wednesday by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
“That 5 million person shortage will get filled. People will get hired,” said center director Anthony Carnevale. “Employers will find ways to substitute the people they can get for the people they need, maybe use a little technology and so on.
“But in the end, our bias is the system needs to be more efficient,” Carnevale said of higher education and the speed at which it graduates students.
Others cast doubts on the projections in the study, titled Recovery: Job Growth and Education Requirements through 2020.
Among the skeptics is Joshua Hall, associate director of the Center for College Affordability & Productivity, which recently found that about 48 percent of employed U.S. college graduates are in jobs that require less than a four-year college education.
