"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 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.