What is the “paper ceiling” and how it affects the job opportunities of millions of people in the United States

According to Opportunity at Workthe STARs represent more than 50% of the US workforce, including 61% of African-Americans and 55% of Hispanics.

And it is that, in general, the numbers of workers without degrees are even higher among minorities. According to the US 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 income of workers without college degrees in the United States has steadily deteriorated over the past few decades.

The existing pay gap among those with a college degree and those who have not doubled in the last 40 yearsaccording to Opportunity at Work, an organization that states that after adjusting wages for inflation, they found that STARs now earn less than in 1976.

And the “paper ceiling” plays a role in this, since in practice it means that workers who did not attend university have difficulties ascending 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 personnel selection processes.

These programs tend to use possession of a college degree as one of their filters and they even have the ability to favor applicants from certain universities in particularas well as certain prior work experiences that may have required a bachelor’s degree.

“The fact that the algorithms are biased is not necessarily their fault. Those algorithms are trained from history and by humans. And unfortunately, our labor market has historically used the requirement of degrees as synonymous with skills“Shad Ahmed, director of operations for Opportunity at Work, told the US public broadcaster NPR’s Marketplace radio show.

The growing demand for university degrees to access certain jobs is part of a phenomenon called “diploma inflation”, according to a study prepared by the Harvard Business School, the Accenture consultancy and the Grads for Life organization. .

“The growing demand for a four-year college degree for jobs that did not previously require one is an important and widespread phenomenon. that is making the US labor market more inefficient.

“Job openings that were traditionally viewed as medium-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 have a college degree as the minimum education requirement. , a credential held by only a third of the adult population“, 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.

But it’s not just workers without diplomas who suffer from the “paper ceiling.”

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.

In that country there are 10.3 million unfilled jobs, but there are only about six million people unemployed, according to the most recent figures released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This lack of workers has forced companies to increase the wages they offer to attract and retain their staff, at a time when the US economy suffers its highest levels of inflation recorded in more than three decades.

“As companies scramble to find talent amid a perceived ‘skills gap’ and ‘labor shortage,’ many of their job openings have needlessly excluded half of the country’s workers who don’t have a bachelor’s degree, but have the skills for higher-paying work,” said Byron Auguste, CEO of Opportunity at Workin a press statement released last June.

In any case, the problem of the “paper ceiling” precedes this post-pandemic economic situation.

Already in the study of the Harvard Business School, 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 prosper 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 some 50 organizations – including companies like Chevron, Accenture, Google, IBM, Linkedin, Comcast and Walmart– have joined a campaign to raise awareness in the United States about the “paper ceiling” and encourage employers to abandon 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 the positions.

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