Connecting Credentials with Occupations: Calculating the Gaps
We continue with our fall blog series where we are exploring the future of jobs in Texas. Previous blog posts showed that Texas is forecasted to have the highest number of jobs added to its economy by 2034 when compared to other states in America, and that the “Management” occupation group is set to have the highest numeric increase in jobs from 2022 to 2034. As we move forward with this series, we begin to dig deeper into jobs data from Lightcast, a labor market analytics company. We will be combining occupation data with educational completions data to see where the state of Texas is in terms of supply-and-demand gaps. We start by looking at data from 2023 in the “General and Operations Managers Occupation” group that comprised most of the numeric growth in the “Management” domain discussed in our previous blog post.
Gaps between Jobs Created and Degrees Awarded: General and Operations Managers Occupation
In order to determine where gaps exist between jobs and degrees awarded, we are using the “CIP-to-SOC” crosswalk that connects academic programs (CIP codes) with occupations (SOC codes). See “A Quick Note About Methodology” below for more details. In reviewing the description for the “General and Operations Managers Occupation” group, the job titles that are representative of this job category include general manager, district manager, and store manager. However, first-line supervisor positions that may not require postsecondary education are excluded from this job group. For this reason, we only include degrees awarded at the bachelors level or higher for this gap analysis.
- As can be seen in the first visualization below, Lightcast data show more than 47,000 job openings in the General and Operations Managers Occupation group in 2023 across Texas. This annual openings estimate is a combination of growth through new jobs as well as replacement jobs that “will need to be filled by new hires due to existing workers leaving the occupation” (Lightcast). This serves as the “demand” in our gap analysis.
- The question then becomes, “Is higher education in Texas collectively producing enough graduates to meet that demand?” In short, the answer is “No.” In 2023, all colleges and universities in Texas awarded almost 38,000 degrees at the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels. That amount of “supply” results in a supply-demand gap of almost 9,800 individuals needed to fill the annual job openings that are a result of growth and turnover in this occupation group.
- Out of the more than 40 academic programs mapped to the “General and Operations Managers Occupations” group, the highest producing single academic program in Texas was “Business Administration and Management, General” with 14,593 degrees awarded in 2023. More than 8,500 of those degrees were master’s degrees, representing 59% of bachelor’s and above degrees awarded in this academic major.
A Quick Note About Methodology: Without getting too far into the methodological weeds, we are using the "CIP-to-SOC" crosswalk to determine where gaps exist between occupations and academic credentials awarded in Texas. CIP codes refer to "Classification of Instructional Programs" (CIP) codes created by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), while the "Standard Occupational Classification" (SOC) system is federal standard published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). One of the challenges of using this taxonomy is the somewhat broad interpretation of which academic programs (CIPs) align with which occupations (SOCs) in certain domains. For example, more than 40 academic programs are mapped to the "General and Operations Managers Occupations" group, including such programs as "General Studies" and "Multi-/Interdisciplinary Studies." Another challenge is the lack of educational level requirements for different occupations, which makes mapping the credential level (certificate, associate's degree, bachelor's degree, etc.) to specific occupations not possible.
So What?
A close examination of the second graph above shows an interesting feature of the CIP-to-SOC mapping. Out of the 10 highest-producing degree programs that are linked to the General and Operations Managers Occupations group, four of them are not programs that most people would consider pathways to a management position. These include “Multi-/Interdisciplinary Studies, Other”, “General Studies”, “Liberal Arts and Sciences/Liberal Studies”, and “Multi-/Interdisciplinary Studies, General”. Out of the 34,289 degrees awarded from these 10 academic programs, almost 10,000 were awarded in these four programs. Removing these four programs from the total number of degrees shown in the first graph above increases the gap between degrees and annual openings to over 19,000 fewer degrees produced than job openings available in 2023.
We decided to keep these programs in the mapping to serve as an exemplar of how we should be careful when reviewing labor market data to inform decision-making around academic programming and supports for student success. Interestingly, if you include the counts for associate’s degree awarded in these four “general” academic majors, the data show that almost 84,000 degrees were awarded across Texas institutions in 2023. Using this number, the conclusion might be that the higher education “system” in Texas is overproducing the supply needed for this specific occupational demand by almost a factor of two. However, as shown above, there is more to the story in terms of analyzing labor market data with academic program data in the context of supply-and-demand metrics. We will continue to explore these nuances across other occupational areas in the next few blog posts in this series.