Students at Tidewater Community College in Virginia.Tidewater Community College
Community colleges are struggling to keep pace with surging demand for workers in advanced infrastructure, energy, and agriculture fields — a shortfall most acute in the nation's largest cities — according to a new national study released this month by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University's Teachers College.
The research brief analyzed job postings data from Lightcast and credential completion data from the federal Integrated Postsecondary Data System between 2010 and 2023. Researchers found that while these so-called AIREA jobs — a classification that spans wind turbine technicians, electrical line workers, truck drivers, HVAC installers, welders, and construction managers — accounted for 27% of all job postings over that period, community colleges produced credentials in those fields for only 17% of their completers.
The supply-demand gap is especially pronounced in major metropolitan areas. Using commuting zones as their unit of analysis, the researchers found that the vast majority of the country had a supply-demand ratio of 0.00 to 0.43 — meaning job postings significantly outstripped credential production. In the most underserved regions, more than six job openings were available for every credential awarded.
The study is an outgrowth of CCRC's Building a Sustainable Future initiative, launched in 2023 to examine how community colleges are preparing students for the green economy in the wake of historic federal investments — including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Researchers say they quickly discovered that a narrow definition of green jobs missed the fuller picture. The green economy, they found, "relies on many occupations that, while not narrowly defined as green, require similar technical competencies and are equally central to the future workforce." That insight led them to develop the broader AIREA classification, encompassing 235 occupational codes and 429 distinct degree and certificate programs.
One of the study's most striking findings concerns wages. Using 2024 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the researchers found that middle-skill workers in AIREA jobs — those requiring more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor's degree — earn approximately 31% more annually than similarly credentialed workers in non-AIREA fields: $61,011 on average, compared to $46,710.
The report describes this wage gap as evidence that AIREA-related professions are "good jobs," offering compensation particularly competitive for candidates without four-year degrees. The researchers suggest the findings have significant implications for economic mobility, especially for students from underserved and rural communities.
