Educational Needs of the Workforce

Are Minnesotans overeducated?

There has been a lot of debate in recent years about whether people will need more or less education to find jobs in the future. 

An often-cited study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education estimated that 74 percent of jobs in Minnesota will require some level of post-secondary education by 2020. Others question that figure, pointing to persistent underemployment among Minnesotans with post-secondary degrees. 

A story by Steve Hine and Matt Bombyk in the latest issue of Trends magazine addresses that question by examining figures from DEED’s Job Vacancy Survey and other statistical sources. 

The analysis concluded that 64.4 percent of jobs in Minnesota require a high school education or less. Another 5 percent require a vocational degree, 4.8 percent require an associate degree, 18.7 percent a bachelor’s degree and 3.5 percent a graduate degree. Those figures all indicate slightly lower educational requirements for jobs in Minnesota than a separate classification system developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

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