The school-to-work transition can be extraordinarily challenging in the turbulent labor market, and the uncertainty about employment outlooks can cause intense anxiety for college students. Drawing from psychology of working theory (PWT), the current study examined the predictor section of the PWT model in relation to employment anxiety with a…

This report is a response to congressional requests for the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to identify, synthesize, and explain the core components of the workforce skills gap discourse and, to the extent possible, explore and clarify evidence on the existence of skills gaps. The report acknowledges that the skills gap label is often applied…

Career education programs in California's community colleges are a critical component of public higher education in the state. Also known as career technical or vocational programs, career education trains individuals for middle-skill jobs that require more than a high school diploma but less than a four-year degree. These jobs make up a third of…

There are natural mismatches in the labor market between the demand for higher-educated laborers and the supply of graduates provided by the higher education system in terms of quantity and qualifications. While there are open positions, some graduates still cannot find work. There are various findings indicating that the mismatch between…

Tectonic changes are reshaping U.S. workplaces as the economy moves deeper into the knowledge-focused age. These changes are affecting the very nature of jobs by rewarding social, communications and analytical skills. They are prodding many workers to think about lifetime commitments to retraining and upgrading their skills. And they may be…

The fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, more ubiquitously known by the acronym "STEM," have received a substantial amount of attention in recent years. As part of a research study investigating the alignment (or lack thereof) between the goals and priorities of educators and employers, we found it difficult to…

Some law school graduates struggle to adjust to job landscape changes after the recent economic downturn. It remains a tough job market for new lawyers, even experienced ones, especially for African-Americans who did not attend top law schools or attain distinctions as editors of law reviews, for example. Graduates have been turning more to jobs…

The impending retirement of the baby boom cohort could pose dramatic challenges for the U.S. labor force for at least two reasons. First, the boomers--adults born between 1946 and 1964--are large in number. Second, boomers are relatively well educated. In this report we develop and analyze occupational and labor force projections to the year 2018,…

The National Association of Colleges and Employers' (NACE's) "2011 Internship & Co-op Survey" indicates that internships are an integral and ever-important part of the college recruiting scene. The survey finds that employers expect to increase internship hiring by about 7 percent this year and co-op positions by nearly 9 percent. Furthermore,…

America is slowly coming out of the Recession of 2007--only to find itself on a collision course with the future: not enough Americans are completing college. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce shows that by 2018, the nation will need 22 million new college degrees--but will fall short of that number by at least 3…

By 2020, 65 percent of all jobs in the economy will require postsecondary education and training beyond high school. That's a pretty strong statement in defense of the value of higher education in this country. But it will mean little unless the nation's colleges and universities--and, specifically, community colleges--can produce more workers…

The National Association of Colleges and Employers conducted its annual survey of employer members from June 15, 2010 to August 15, 2010, to benchmark data relevant to college recruiting. From a base of 861 employers holding organizational membership, there were 268 responses for a response rate of 31 percent. Following are some of the major…

In this paper, we explore what happened to the young workers featured in the classic text "Young workers: From school to work." In this book, the authors made predictions about the labour market outcomes and careers for the young people in their study, classifying them into three groups: the "careerless", the "short-term careers" and the "extended…

This report is the successor to "Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Demand through 2018," in which researchers examined the connections between educational attainment and educational demand in the labor market. In this report, the authors update the jobs projected to be available through 2020, using a macro-micro modeling…

This chapter examines the job outlook for occupations where the most important path to entry is through programs typically found at the community college: an associate degree or postsecondary training but less than a degree. The discussion draws on labor market projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the federal agency charged…