# Presentation: 604040

## The Economic Imperative Behind No Child Left Behind

- The primary goal of NCLB is to:
- Increase the academic achievement of all children and
- Eliminate the education gap experienced by  economically disadvantaged and minority children.

## Three Aspects of the Economic Imperative

- The Labor Shortage
- The Skills Gap
- The Education Gap

## THE LABOR SHORTAGE

## The U.S. population is aging.

- By 2050, persons over the age of 55 will constitute 38% of the population

## Share of Civilian Population by Age

| Years | Age 
16-34 | Age
 35-54 | Age 
55 + |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1950 |      40% |     36% |     24% |
| 2000 |      34% |     39% |     27% |
| 2050 |      32% |     30% |     38% |

## Between 1950 and 2050

- The youngest population cohort declines by 8 percentage points
- The middle age population cohort declines by 6 percentage points
- The oldest cohort population increases by 14 points

- The civilian labor force is also aging.

## Share of Civilian Labor Force by Age

|  Years | Age 
16-34 | Age
 35-54 |  Age 55+ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  1950 |     42% |     41% |     17% |
|  2000 |     39% |     38% |     13% |
|  2050 |     39% |     42% |     19% |

## Between 1950 and 2050

- The youngest workforce cohort declines by 3 percentage points
- The middle aged workforce cohort increases by 1 percentage point
- The oldest workforce cohort increases by 2 percentage points

## Percentages of Population and Labor Force By Age

| Years |     Age 16-34 |     Age 35-54 |     Age 55+ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | Pop   LF   Ratio | Pop   LF   Ratio | Pop  LF  Ratio |
| 1950 | 40%  42%  1.05 | 36%  41%  1.14 | 24%  17%  .71 |
| 2000 | 34%  39%  1.15 | 39%  48%  1.23 | 27%  13%  .48 |
| 2050 | 32%  39%  1.22 | 30%  42%  1.40 | 38%  19%  .50 |

## Between 1950 and 2050

- The youngest population cohort decreases by 8 percentage points, but its labor force proportion decreases by only 3 percentage points, suggesting that:
- Labor force participation of this cohort is expected to increase
- The size of the whole labor force is decreasing.

## Between 1950 and 2050

- The middle aged population cohort declines in size by 6 percentage points, but its proportion of the labor force actually increases  by 1 percentage point, suggesting that:
- Labor force participation of this cohort is  expected to increase
- The size of the labor force is decreasing.

## Between 1950 and 2050

- The oldest population cohort is expected to grow by 14 percentage points, but its proportion of the labor force will grow by only 2 percentage points.
- Labor force participation diminishes by age

## Minority groups are growing faster than the white majority.

- By 2050, Whites will constitute less than 50% of the population.

## Proportion of Population by Ethnic Origin

|  | 2004 | 2010 | 2020 | 2050 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| White | 69.7% | 67.3% | 63.8% | 46.8% |
| Hispanic | 13.0% | 14.6% | 17.0% | 28.6% |
| Black | 12.3% | 12.5% | 12.8% | 13.2% |
| Asian | 4.2% | 4.8% | 5.7% | 10.6% |
| Indian | 0.8% | 0.8% | 0.8% | 0.8% |

## Between 2002 and 2050

- Whites lose 1/3 of their share of the U.S. population.
- Asians and Hispanics more than double their share of the U.S. population.
- Blacks gain a 1 percent share.
- American Indians hold firm.

## Between 2004 and 2050

- There will be an increasing concentration of minorities within the younger population cohorts.

## Proportion of 18-24 Year Olds by Nation and Population Group

| Population Categories | Total          
Population         | 18-24 Year Olds |
| --- | --- | --- |
| National |         100.0% |          9.7% |
| White  |          81.0% |          9.3% |
| Black |          12.6% |         11.1% |
| Hispanic |          12.6% |         13.4% |

## In other words, 

- as the U.S. population ages, the younger cohorts
- decline in relative size and
- become increasingly minority in composition.
- We can expect the workforce to also become increasingly minority in composition.

## Another way of looking at the same information

- Four generations are currently represented in the U.S. labor force:
- Swing  		1933-1945
- Baby Boom		1946-1964
- Gen X			1965-1976
- Millennial		1977-1994

## As of 1994

|  |  % Pop | Birth       Period        | First          16 | First          55 | Last     75 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| SW |  11 |  33-45 | 1949 | 1988 | 2020 |
| BB | 28 |   46-64 | 1952 | 2001 | 2039 |
| GX | 16 |   65-76 | 1981 | 2020 | 2051 |
| Mill | 26 | 77-94 | 1993 | 2032 | 2069 |

## By 2050,

-  Members of the Swing, Baby Boom and Gen X generations will have left the labor force. (55%)
- A large proportion of the Millennial generation will also have retired. (10%)
- Future generations cannot not pick up the slack by 2050.

## The result will be that:

- The pool from which new native workers may be drawn will be both smaller and made up primarily of minority individuals.

## The Aspen Institute says that

- From now until 2021, there will be no additional native-born workers in this prime age.  None.

## Indeed,

- What we will be experiencing will be labor shortages.

## As of 2010, BLS projects the following numbers. 

| Population |    299,862,000 |
| --- | --- |
| Employment |    167,754,000 |
| Workforce |    159,993,000 |
| Shortage |        7,761,000 |

## Other Projections

- NAM – Up to 12 million skilled foreign workers will have to be imported by 2020.
- Herman, Olivo, Gioia – By 2010, there will be 10,033,000 more jobs than workers*
- *    *Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few Workers*

## The Shortage Is Already Here!

- NAM claims that almost all current and near-term job growth will come from immigrants and their children.
- Between 1996 and 2000, immigrants accounted for almost half of all labor force growth.
- 1 out of 8 workers in the U.S. come from other countries.

## THE SKILLS GAP

- 65% of the fastest growing occupations require some postsecondary education or training.
- By 2010, 42% of all U.S. jobs will require a vocational certificate, associate degree, bachelor’s degree or higher.

## Percent Growth of Educational Certificates By 2010

|    Level of Certification |        Percent Growth |
| --- | --- |
| Associate Degree | 32% |
| Vocational Certificate | 24% |
| Bachelor’s Degree | 22% |

## By contrast,

- Only 10% of the top 50 declining occupations require postsecondary education or training.

## Fact Three

- While worker educational requirements are increasing, the educational attainment of the U.S. workforce is declining.

## From 1980 to 2000,

- The number of workers with some post high school education rose by 19 percent.*
- The growth for the next 20 years is projected to be 4 percent.*
- * Richard Kazis, *Double the Numbers: Postsecondary Attainment and Underrepresented Youth *

## From 1980 to 2000,

- The proportion of the labor force with a college education increased by 8.6%.*
- The increase of that proportion over the next 20 years is projected at 1.5% to 5%.*
- * Atlantic Monthly, February 2004

## In 1999, Bachelor Level Engineering Degrees Granted

- U.S. 		  61,000
- Japan		103,000
- E.U.		134,000
- China		195,000*
- * *Choose to Compete*, Computer Systems Policy Project

- U.S. produced only 12% of the engineering bachelor’s degrees produced by the U.S., E.U., Japan, and China in 1999.

## Regarding Competitive Advantage

-   “If you look at India, China, and Russia... even if you discount 90 percent of the people there as uneducated farmers...you still end up with about 300 million people who are educated.  That’s bigger than the U.S. work force.”
- Bob Herbert, New York Times

## Fact Four

- Almost half of this nation’s adult population reads at a level below that expected of the average high school graduate.

## Percent of Illiterate Adults by Number of States

|   Number of States | Percent of Adults |
| --- | --- |
| 14 |  50% or More |
| 20 | 40% to 49% |
| 16 | 32% to 30% |

## These individuals:

- Make up 39% of the workforce
- Work in low paying, unstable jobs that are disappearing from the economy
- Cannot—without extensive remediation—profit from projected economic growth

## So What Does This Have To Do With NCLB?

## The Education Gap

## National Statistics on High School Students

- For every 100 students who enter the 9th grade:
- 21 do not graduate
- 79 graduate from high school
- 50 enter college within 2 years
- 49 complete some college
- 21 receive at least a baccalaureate degree

## Moreover,

- Only 32% of all students in public high school leave high school prepared to attend college.*
- The Manhatten Institute

## The Education Gap

- The rates of graduation, college enrollment, postsecondary remediation, and completion vary significantly by race or ethnicity.

| Achievement | White | Black | Hispanic |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Graduate from High School | 93% | 82% | 63% |
| Enroll in College | 48% | 44% | 35% |
| Leave Prior to Award | 44% | 61% | 62% |
| Achieve BA/BS Degree | 33% | 18% | 11% |

## Why is this important?

- Because minorities are the fastest growing source of workers for the U.S. economy.

## And

- Because Black and Hispanic students are:
- Less likely to graduate from high school
- Less likely to enroll in college
- Less likely to complete a degree
- Less likely to be prepared for the economy of the 21st century

## The economic picture as it stands today:

- We have an aging workforce.
- We have a growing labor shortage driven by demographics.
- We have a significant number of unemployed persons who do not have the knowledge or skills to become employed.
- Forty percent of our working adults do not read at the level expected of the average high school student.

- We expect to import millions of skilled foreign workers to meet our labor demand.
- One-third of the immigrants entering our country lack a high school education.

- Many of the young people coming out of our high schools are not prepared to enter the 21st century workforce.

**The “Economic Crisis” facing the United States is an “Educational Crisis”**

## The educational question is: 

- Whether, in the future, we will have a workforce of sufficient size and educational attainment to be globally competitive.

## The social question is:

- Whether our Black and Hispanic citizens will be empowered to fully take part in the economy of the 21st Century?

## As the data I have presented show:

- The two questions are one.

## As Alan Greenspan recently put it”:

-    ...Equal opportunity requires equal access to knowledge.  We cannot expect everyone to  be equally skilled.  But we need to pursue equality of opportunity to ensure that our economic system works at maximum efficiency and is perceived as just in its distribution of rewards.*
- * Address to Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce 2/20/04

## This is the economic (and social) imperative behind No Child Left Behind

## And NCLB is just the beginning.