Identifying Opportunity Occupations in the Nation’s Largest Metropolitan Economies

In this joint report from the Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Atlanta Federal Reserve Banks, researchers investigate the extent to which the U.S. economy offers decent-paying jobs to workers without a four-year college degree. They define an “opportunity occupation” as one that is generally considered accessible to someone without a bachelor’s degree and that pays at least the national annual median wage, adjusted for differences in local consumption prices.
Focusing on the 100 largest metropolitan areas and using measures that reflect both the typical education needed to enter an occupation and the requisite education suggested by incumbent workers and occupational experts, they find that 27.4 percent of employment could be found in opportunity occupations in 2014. This estimate falls by more than seven percentage points—to 20.3 percent—when they predicate job accessibility on the educational attainment requested by employers in online job ads.
The availability of opportunity-rich work for those without a bachelor’s degree varies dramatically across the metropolitan areas in their study, ranging from 36.6 percent to well under half that level. The educational preferences of employers as expressed in online job ads introduce a potentially significant barrier to economic self-sufficiency for those without a four-year degree, lowering the share of opportunity occupations by more than 10 percentage points in some metro areas.
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09.29.22
Inflation: Drivers and Dynamics 2022 Conference
The Inflation: Drivers and Dynamics 2022 conference, co-sponsored by the Center for Inflation Research and the European Central Bank will take place on September 29-30, 2022 in Cleveland, OH.
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10.06.22
Conference on Real-Time Data Analysis, Methods, and Applications
The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is sponsoring the Annual Conference on Real-Time Data Analysis, Methods, and Applications in Macroeconomics and Finance to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, at the Cleveland Reserve Bank on Thursday and Friday, October 6–7, 2022.
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11.17.22
2022 Financial Stability Conference: Frontier Risks, a New Normal, and Policy Challenges
The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and the Office of Financial Research will host their 10th annual financial stability conference on November 17–18, 2022. This year’s conference is titled Financial Stability: Frontier Risks, a New Normal, and Policy Challenges.