If you didn’t get to the Future Ready Iowa Summit on April 3, you missed an interesting presentation by Georgetown University professor Nicole Smith, who has done extensive research on well-paying jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree, as well as studies on the continuing wage gap faced by women.  

Smith, who is chief economist with the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, highlighted data from the center’s Good Jobs Project. According to its report on “Good Jobs That Pay Without a B.A.,” https://goodjobsdata.org/ U.S. workers without a four-year degree filled 30 million “good” jobs — those paying at least $35,000 a year, or $45,000 for workers 45 or older — in 2015, up from 27 million in 1991. By comparison, 36 million good jobs required a B.A. or higher. 

Later, I looked up Iowa’s data and found that our state gained a net of 62,000 “good” non-B.A. jobs from 1991 to 2015, a 22 percent increase. Over that 25-year period, Iowa was among 35 states that had a net gain in well-paying non-B.A. jobs, primarily from a gain in skilled-services positions. With that increase, Iowa’s share of workers without a bachelor’s degree who have a good job reached 40.4 percent of the state’s workforce in 2015, up from 32 percent in 1991. 

Not surprisingly, the report concluded that the good jobs are increasingly found in skilled services industries, such as health services and financial services. In fact, the share of good jobs in skilled-services industries has risen since 1991 in every state. In Iowa, jobs in skilled services industries increased 15 percent from 1991 to 2015, outpacing the national average increase of 10 percent. 

An eye-opening statistic Smith brought out at the summit points to the continuing gender disparity between men and women in well-paying jobs for people without a B.A. — a situation that holds true at all education levels. Among non-degree-holders, men hold 70 percent of good jobs, while women hold just 30 percent, she noted. 

According to the “Women Can’t Win” study co-authored by Smith, a man with a bachelor’s degree out-earns an equally qualified woman by about $26,000 per year, on average. At the graduate degree level, this difference in earnings rises to $38,000 per year. In the race to catch up to men, women have sought more education, and so now women hold about two-thirds of U.S. student loan debt, which is approaching $1.2 trillion. 

“So we have a disproportionate number of women with student debt, who are required to pay back this debt with lower earnings than men,” Smith said. “This is an uncomfortable conversation to have, but we must have it.”