According to Opportunity at Work, the STARs represent more than 50% of the U.S. workforce, including 61% of African Americans and 55% of Hispanics.
And, in general, the numbers of workers without degrees are even higher among minorities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 62% of those 25 and older do not have a bachelor’s degree, but that percentage rises to 72% for African-Americans and 79% for Latinos.
But what concrete effects does the “paper ceiling” have on working life?
The incomes of workers without college degrees in the United States have progressively deteriorated over the past few decades.
Obtaining bachelor’s degrees leads to much better paid salaries. GETTY IMAGES
The existing wage gap between those with a college degree and those who have not doubled over the past 40 years, according to Opportunity at Work, which claims that after adjusting wages for inflation they found that STARs now earn less than they did in 1976.
And the “paper ceiling” has a role in this because in practice it means that workers who did not attend university have difficulty promoting to managerial positions within the companies where they work, but also to get a better paid job in other companies.
This last possibility has become even more uphill since companies began to resort to artificial intelligence programs for their recruitment and selection processes.
These programs tend to use the possession of a college degree as one of their filters and They even have the ability to favor applicants from certain universities in particular, as well as certain previous work experiences that may have required the bachelor’s degree.
“The fact that algorithms are biased is not necessarily their fault. Those algorithms are trained from history and by humans. And Unfortunately, our job market has historically used the requirement of degrees as synonymous with skills.” Shad Ahmed, chief operating officer of Opportunity at Work, told NPR’s Marketplace radio program.
The growing requirement for university degrees for access to certain jobs is part of a phenomenon called “diploma inflation,” according to a study by Harvard Business School, consulting firm Accenture and Grads for Life.
“The growing demand for a four-year college degree for jobs that previously did not require one is an important and widespread phenomenon. that is making the U.S. labor market more inefficient. UU.
“Job postings that were traditionally viewed as middle-skill jobs (those that require employees to have more than a high school diploma, but less than a college degree) in the United States now establish a college degree as a minimum education requirement. a credential that only one-third of the adult population possesses,” the report states.
The situation has been aggravated by the fact that between 2012 and 2019, 69% of the new jobs created correspond to occupations that require a bachelor’s degree or higher to qualify for the position.
Negative effects on the economy
But it’s not just workers without diplomas who suffer from the “paper ceiling.”
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Companies and the economy as a whole are also affected., especially at a time when, paradoxically, the United States is going through a crisis due to a shortage of workers.
There are 10.3 million unfilled jobs in the country, but only about six million people are unemployed, according to the latest figures released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This lack of workers has forced companies to raise the wages they offer to attract and retain their staff, at a time when the U.S. economy is suffering its highest levels of inflation in more than three decades.
“As companies struggle to find talent amid perceived ‘skills gap’ and ‘labour shortages’, many of their job openings have unnecessarily excluded half of the country’s workers who do not have a bachelor’s degree, but who have a bachelor’s degree.n skills for higher-paying work,” said Byron Auguste, CEO of Opportunity at Work, in a press statement released last June.
In any case, the problem of the “paper ceiling” precedes this post-pandemic economic situation.
Already in the Harvard Business School study, published in 2017, it was warned that the practice of requiring university degrees to occupy positions that previously did not require it “prevents companies from finding the talent they need to grow and thrive and makes it harder for Americans to access jobs that provide the foundation for a decent standard of living.”
In recent months, a coalition of about 50 organizations – including companies such as Chevron, Accenture, Google, IBM, Linkedin, Comcast and Walmart– have joined in a campaign to raise awareness in the United States about the “paper ceiling” and encourage employers to discard this practice.
Some of these companies have already been reducing their requirement for college degrees. That is the case, for example, of Accenture, where only 26% of its positions require a degree; and IBM, where this requirement reaches 29% of positions.
