Minimum formal education

The Occupational Requirements Survey (ORS) publishes job-related information on physical demands; environmental 

conditions; education, training, and experience; as well as cognitive and mental requirements. The job requirements 

reflect those necessary for workers to perform critical tasks in support of the critical job functions. The ORS provides 

information on the formal minimum education required to perform jobs, not the educational attainment of workers. For 

example: if a job requires a bachelor’s degree, but workers performing the job hold higher degrees such as a Ph.D., the 

estimates reflect the job requirement of a bachelor’s degree.

Minimum formal education requirements are one of four components used to calculate an occupation’s specific 

vocational preparation, or SVP. The SVP is determined by the amount of preparation time required by the job and 

includes credentials, prior work experience, minimum formal education requirements, and on-the-job training.

General education requirements are not included in SVP since they are not relevant to any specific occupation. The 

minimum formal education requirements and the vocational time included in the SVP are shown below:1

Table 1. Minimum formal education requirements

As shown in Table 1, the time required to complete incidental degrees is included in each education requirement. For 

example, if a job requires a master’s degree, workers would have incidentally obtained a bachelor’s degree. In this 

example, SVP would include both the time required to complete a master’s degree as well as the time required to 

complete a bachelor’s degree.

Minimum formal education estimates only include the degree requirement and not incidental degrees. So, when a job 

requires a master’s degree, it is only reflected in the master’s degree requirement and not in the lower degree 

requirements. In 2023, 30.0 percent of civilian workers had no minimum education requirement, and a high school 

diploma was required for 40.1 percent.
Occupational Requirements Survey ●www.bls.gov/ors ●orsinfo@bls.gov ●202.691.6199

Not all minimum formal education requirements will be published for each occupation. While civilian workers and 

occupational groups may include workers in most education levels, at the detailed occupations fewer education levels 

may be published either because there are no workers with that job requirement, or the estimate fails publication 

criteria.

Sometimes, information about the distribution of minimum education requirements can be understood even when 

certain requirements are not published. For example, cooks, short order only had two publishable estimates: 92.8 

percent of workers had no minimum education requirement, and a high school diploma was required for 7.2 percent. 

Together they sum to 100 percent of workers, which explains why there are no other estimates available for this 

occupation.

When there are no minimum education requirements, the ORS publishes whether literacy is required. The estimates for 

literacy required and not required sum to the percentage of workers with no minimum education requirement. For 

example, 90.6 percent of dishwashers had no minimum formal education requirement in 2023. Of these workers, 

literacy was required for 52.9 percent and not required for 37.7 percent.
Occupational Requirements Survey ●www.bls.gov/ors ●orsinfo@bls.gov ●202.691.6199

Additional resources:

• Latest news release

• Archived ORS news releases

• Handbook of Methods

• Collection manuals

• Factsheets

Articles:

• All The Economics Daily (TED) articles on ORS

• Minds at work: what’s required according to the Occupational Requirements Survey (PDF)

• A look at teachers’ job requirements, employer costs, and benefits (PDF)

• Occupational Requirements Survey: Third wave testing report (PDF)

• Occupational Requirements Survey: results from a job observation pilot test

• The Occupational Requirements Survey: estimates from preproduction testing

For additional information on occupational requirements see the ORS homepage or download the ORS complete dataset

to explore the latest estimates.

1 For more information see the ORS Collection Manual.