What the Adult Training and Education Survey Tells Us About the Skilled Technical Workforce

As defined by Rothwell (2016), a job in the skilled technical workforce (STW) is one that is open to an individual without a bachelor’s degree who has a high level of knowledge in a technical domain such as computers, mathematics, healthcare, architecture, engineering, construction, or extraction. The United States needs a STW to foster innovation and remain competitive in the global economy, but findings by the National Academies’ in Building America’s Skilled Technical Workforce (2017) indicate the United States is not adequately developing and sustaining the STW needed to compete in the 21st century; they project that by 2022 the United States will have 3.4 million unfilled STW jobs. Our understanding of this shortfall is in part due to data deficits that prohibit our ability to describe and quantify the skill formation pathways that lead to employment in the STW. These data deficits hinder the ability of policy makers to develop workforce programs, the ability of educators to develop relevant training programs, and the ability of job seekers to make informed decisions regarding the nondegree credentials that will lead to employment in the STW.