State Future Workforce Gap Summary
The Future Workforce Gap Summary provides states with information on their workforce pipeline as it pertained to high growth jobs that require a two-year college degree or more. Summaries are available only for some states. In order to produce a summary, a state must have had 25 percent or more of its 2008 graduates ACT-tested and had at least 100 or more students represented in that state's highest growth career fields. These criteria permit reasonably accurate comparisons between the percent of projected growth for the highest growth career fields in the state and the percent of students interested in these career fields in the state.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on long-term projections of employment for each state in the U.S. were used. These projections data are provided at the occupation level. Annual expected job openings (calculated from BLS data), education level classification (minimum level of education required to enter the occupation), and career field classification (required using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system to classify state-provided lists of occupations) were used to determine the projected highest growth career fields included in each state workforce summary.
ACT data for 2008 were used to generate state-specific results on students' interests and performance related to their readiness for college. The percentages of students interested in each of the 26 career fields represented by the ACT World-of-Work Map were calculated. In addition, the percentages of students ready for college by subject area (met or exceeded the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in English, Math, Reading, or Science) were also calculated.
Five of the expected highest growth career fields are selected for the Future Workforce Gap Summary. Two charts are presented. One presents the percent of projected workforce growth compared to the percent of student interest by career field. The second presents the college readiness of high school students interested in these high growth career fields by subject.
Each of the PDF files below is 2 pages long and 43KB.
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