Technology has tended to shift opportunity to tech-centric urban hubs that attract a highly educated workforce. As I reported in February, MIT researcher and labor economist David Autor has said people without college degrees can no longer count on jobs in manufacturing or clerical and administrative support. Researchers at Brookings have noted that digitalization creates demand for highly skilled workers while displacing others.
However, Mark Muro, Jacob Whiton, and Patrick McKenna now write at Brookings that tech jobs “…do offer the potential to build inclusive growth and address regional inequality”—through the creation of “new-collar” jobs that enable upward mobility for blue-collar workers.
“Our latest analysis contributes to this emerging picture,” they write. “Call it ‘mid-tech,’ but at any rate it’s clear that a surprisingly large share of classic tech jobs are actually quite accessible to workers without a bachelor’s degree. Accordingly, our numbers suggest tech may also be a more plausible economic development strategy for a wider array of cities and regions than conventional knowledge suggests, especially as IT continues to spread.”
They analyzed 13 high-tech occupations in the computer and mathematical (C&M) group from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ O*NET database. They found that 30% of workers in this group do not hold a bachelor’s degree. “This is intriguing, as solid statistical evidence confirms that educational pedigree isn’t a non-negotiable requirement in tech,” they write. “The sector’s voracious need for talent combined with its need for specific technical skills represents a genuine opportunity for inclusion outside the typical college-based networks.”
And the mid-tech jobs tend to be widely dispersed. “Although these jobs are available almost everywhere,” the researchers write, “they compose especially large shares of local tech employment in an array of metros often far from the classic tech centers.”
They explain that the mid-tech share of C&M employment remains below 20% in such “hard-core hubs” as San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston. “By contrast,” they continue, “the mid-tech share of regional C&M employment ranges much higher in a less glamorous list of more workaday locations: Olympia, WA (where mid-tech employment pushes 60% of C&M employment); Jackson, MI (38.7%); and Lakeland, FL (36.7%).”
They conclude, “In sum, as the current tech boom continues, mid-tech work is beginning to look increasingly like a real opportunity for people with a passion for tech but no college degree, as well as for Heartland economic development.”
Visit Brookings for more, including access to data on mid-tech jobs for all 50 states, 100 large metropolitan areas, and 125 smaller metro areas.
