Education Gap – Chicago – 3.5 job openings for every unemployed worker with a bachelor’s degree or higher

A just-released report from the Brookings Institution rated Chicago and other cities by how well job openings line up with workers’ education. Like most big cities, Chicago has a larger share of available jobs that require higher education — a bachelor’s degree or more — than job seekers who hold those degrees.

There are 3.5 job openings in Chicago for every unemployed worker with a bachelor’s degree or higher. But there’s not quite one job — the calculation is 0.9 — for each worker who has no more than a high school diploma.

The Brookings upshot: Cities with better-educated residents have unemployment rates that are on average about 2 percentage points lower than cities that have a less-educated populace.

There are, as you’d expect, wide disparities. The May unemployment rate in Madison, Wis., was just 4.9 percent, mainly because the city has a greater concentration of educated workers, Brookings said. (Yes, it’s also a state capital with a big university.) Fresno, Calif., struggled with 14.9 percent unemployment, partly because of a dearth of highly-educated workers. (Chicago’s unemployment rate for May: 8.5 percent.)

The benefits of a well-educated workforce ripple beyond those with advanced degree…

via closing the gap – chicagotribune.com.

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