With more than half of all manufacturing jobs now going to workers with postsecondary education, it is highly unlikely that laborers with a high school diploma or less can see a return of the days when they held the majority of factory positions, according to a joint research study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
At the same time the industry is “upskilling,” it is continuing to downsize from its heyday of the 1970s, when workers with a high school diploma or less held 79 percent of manufacturing jobs, notes the study report, Upskilling and Downsizing in American Manufacturing.
By 2016, that group held only 43 percent of manufacturing jobs while 56 percent were held by workers with some level of postsecondary education, the study found, while seven million such jobs disappeared between 1979 and 2017.
“The downsizing accelerated upon China’s entry into the World Trade Organization,” noted Dr. Anthony P. Carnevale, CEW director and the report’s lead author.
While the manufacturing industry remains the top provider of so-called good jobs in 35 states for workers lacking a bachelor’s degree, the sector will continue to bleed jobs – about 2 percent, or 253,000 jobs – up to 2027, CEW researchers project.
Within manufacturing, workers with bachelor’s degrees went from holding 29 percent of non-production jobs in 1991 to 44 percent in 2016. Meanwhile, high school-educated workers continued to occupy most production jobs, although their share declined from 79 percent to 64 percent.
Among other key study findings of the period between 1991 and 2016:
