Women without college degrees to bear brunt of future job losses: report – The Hill

Women who don’t have a college degree are going to bear the brunt of job losses in the future, a recent analysis found.

According to employment trends and predictions, the jobs non-college-educated women have typically found security in are going to decline, per the analysis.

“Specifically, non-college women are slated to lose the most middle-wage jobs — jobs that have historically allowed them to provide for themselves and their family,” the report by Third Way found. “And unless there is a surge in women moving into traditionally male-dominated professions, job growth for non-college women will be concentrated in the lowest-paying sectors.”

The analysis, performed on data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), projected jobs like cashiers and mail carriers, mostly held by people without a college degree, are going to see some of the biggest declines in employment in the next 10 years.

According to the gender breakdown of the occupations likely to see the most cuts, two-thirds of them are held by women, the report found.

In-office and administrative work will also see declines, the analysis predicted. These jobs have historically been held by women, and have offered “good wages, benefits, and job security, all of which provided a dependable path into the middle-class for non-college women,” it said.

Factors such as automation and outsourcing are reducing companies’ desire to hire someone and have the employee work in-house, Third Way found. And the remaining administrative jobs now tend to require a college degree.

The BLS predicted that slightly more than half of all jobs created in the industries experiencing the most growth will go toward women, although they will be low-wage occupations that pay less than $36,700 annually. Only 15 percent of new jobs that will go to women will make more than $110,100 each year, per the report.

As more college graduates enter the workforce and secure high-paying jobs, middle-wage jobs will continue to disappear, which will leave people without a college degree, specifically women, finding employment in low-paying positions, the analysis found.

Many of the positions women without college degrees will find themselves in will involve caring for others, Third Way reported.

Without efforts to increase the quality and pay for care-work jobs and an investment in more middle-class positions, “non-college women will face further hurdles” to gaining economic security, the organization found.