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29 million middle-class jobs that don't require a B.A.
Researchers find more jobs than expected that pay between $35,000 and $72,000 without a university degree.
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Jeremy Hobson: Well many economists will tell you that a college degree is about as good a ticket to the middle class as you can find. But a study out this morning says there are 29 million jobs that offer middle class pay but don't require a bachelor's degree.
Marketplace's Jeff Tyler has the story.
Jeff Tyler: Researchers were surprised to find so many jobs that pay between $35,000 and $72,000, but don’t require a university degree.
Tony Carnevale is director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
Tony Carnevale: It tells us there are still rungs in the ladder, after high school, before you get to a four-year college degree. And that you can climb those rungs.
Consider Jeremy Montoya. While still in high school, he worked with an organization called Skills USA, and learned to coordinate events involving thousands of students. After that, Montoya skipped college, and went straight to work at Apple. He now makes between $40,000 and $50,000 a year.
Jeremy Montoya: I think I’m in a good place, starting off at the age of 22.
Other well-paid jobs may require a training certificate. According to the study, people with a certificate in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning can earn more than 25 percent of university graduates.
I’m Jeff Tyler for Marketplace.
As an example, we can make cars in this country, but, if there aren't enough people that can afford to buy them,...where are we ? But then I suppose that's why we want to be able to sell overseas to the Chinese, for example, because there won't be any domestic market. Except for those making the money.
First I'd like to say that Marketplace needs to come to grips with free-market being over. That said, we are returning to a domestic economy that will again need well-paid middle-class consumers to fuel the economy. So, the emphasis on college and the narrowing of job classifications is not a good indicator of where we are going as a country. The financial media did the same thing as it reported Bush's policies that had everyone seek graduate degrees in order to be competitive. That hype was of course given so as to fuel the for-profit and the private student loan industry.
The attempts to privatize education and expand to mega-health systems is the last gasp of the free-market capitalists to maintain a fledgling market in something. All be it in Africa. This won't work either as everybody in the country will be fighting this education privatization and health care expansion as they see what it entails.
