Report Reveals the 10 Top Cities With Most Educated Workers Relative to Available Jobs

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Report Reveals the 10 Top Cities With Most Educated Workers Relative to Available Jobs

Area Development Online News Desk (09/14/2011)

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Brookings: Education, Demand, and Unemployment in Metropolitan America

A new report from The Brookings Institution, “Education, Demand, and Unemployment in Metropolitan America,” analyzed the 100 largest metro areas in U.S. to find gaps between the supply and demand for educated workers, and measured that relationship to unemployment.

"We found the average job requires 13.54 years of education, and the average adult has completed 13.48 years of education," said Jonathan Rothwell, a senior research analyst with The Brookings Institution. "That's not a huge gap, but it's an average that represents a distribution. There is a group of people at the end who have high school or less education, and they're having a very difficult time finding jobs. That's why nationally we are seeing unemployment rates that are significantly higher for less-educated workers across the United States."

The top 10 cities with the most educated workers relative to the jobs available in their economy are:

1) Madison, WI

2) Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA

3) Provo-Orem, UT

4)Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT

5) Raleigh-Cary, NC

6) San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

7) Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

8) Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH

9) Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI

10) San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA

The report's authors noted that iInadequate demand and inadequate education, relative to available occupations, are both hampering economic recovery in U.S. metropolitan areas. "With a still weakened private sector, strategic public investment and regional economic diversification can help address the first problem. Yet even when the economy recovers, longer-term 'structural unemployment' will linger in some metropolitan areas because of mismatches between the supply of, and demand for, educated workers."

The Brooking Institution's solutions to that problem included boosting educational attainment; enhancing the skills of workers; and increasing demand for less-educated workers by providing public goods needed by industries such as manufacturing and the "green" economy.