Moving the Goalposts: How Demand for a Bachelor’s Degree Is Reshaping the Workforce

Introduction:

An increasing number of job seekers face being shut out of middle-skill, middle-class occupations by employers’ rising demand for a bachelor’s degree. This credential inflation, or “upcredentialing” is affecting a wide range of jobs from executive assistants to construction supervisors and has serious implications both for workers not seeking a college degree and for employers struggling to fill jobs.

Source: Burning Glass

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Labor Standards and the Reorganization of Work: Gaps in Data and Research

Abstract:

A common but understudied argument is that the reorganization of work has contributed to the deterioration of labor standards in the US over the past four decades. Yet an analysis of existing aggregate data does not show a strong, unambiguous increase in key measures of nonstandard work. This paper therefore identifies data gaps and research questions that need to be answered, in order to better understand trends in workplace restructuring during the era of growing wage inequality.

Source: Bernhardt, Annette. (2014). Labor Standards and the Reorganization of Work: Gaps in Data and Research. UC Berkeley: Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3hc6t3d5

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