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Title: Defining Skilled Technical Work

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2015

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Abstract: Somewhere between professional occupations and low-paid service occupations lay the group of workers known as middle-skilled. They are varying called trades workers, technicians, blue collar workers, or craft professionals. Here, I will refer to them as skilled technical workers. Compared to other groups, there is little research on skilled technical workers. Labor economists overwhelmingly focuses on workers at the highest and lower pay levels and typically distinguishes those with a bachelors degree from those with a high school diploma. The limited research may partly be the result of government data collection. For example, the two largest and most regular surveys of individualsthe Census Bureaus American Community Surveys and Current Population Surveysdo not ask workers about their informal (or non-degree yielding) training, nor do they ask people about their field of study for two-year or lower levels of post-secondary education, even as they do collect this information for bachelors degree fields. Informal training and sub-bachelors level higher education are the two most common pathways to a skilled technical career.

Url: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/pgasite/documents/webpage/pga_167744.pdf

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Authors: Rothwell, Jonathan

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Institution: Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program, The Brookings Institution

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Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure

Countries: United States