The reality is that these two challenges are, in many ways, connected. In short, employers' reliance on the college degree is leading them to overlook millions of people with the skills to get the job done.Īcross the country, business leaders are charting a path to economic recovery and reckoning with a centuries-old legacy of systemic racism. Our education and workforce system is still set up to screen out anyone who doesn't fit the image of a job-ready, traditionally-educated worker, which means predominantly women and people of color. And the challenge that STARs, particularly Black STARs, face in today's economic climate is, in many ways, no different from the one they faced before Covid-19. I secured an apprenticeship and later a full-time position as a systems engineer.īut too many workers like me don't get that opportunity. My new employer, Mastercard, recognized the skills I had acquired through alternative routes and valued my experience. After several other low-paying jobs, I discovered CoderGirl, an initiative of LaunchCode, which changed the course of my life by helping connect me to my first tech job. I know firsthand what that journey looks like and what it can lead to. Based on the skills they already have, almost half of those 70 million-plus skilled workers could earn, on average, 70% more than they earn today, and access opportunities in the post-Covid economy that are too often only available to those with college degrees. In fact, new data indicate that the majority of Black workers are STARs, but even though six million of them have the skills to succeed in higher-wage jobs, they are dramatically less likely to transition into those jobs than their white colleagues.īusiness leaders must find ways to bring more STARs into their talent pipeline. Troublingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, many of them are Black, and therefore susceptible to the "lethal preconditions" of racism and economic inequality that have made them even more vulnerable to the economic aftershocks of the pandemic. In the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, millions of STARs are now unemployed, subject to the "first out, last in" problem that plagues the American workforce. Roughly 30 million of these individuals, who are skilled through alternative routes (often referred to as STARs), already possess the skills for significantly higher-wage work but have never been given the chance to pursue those careers. Covid's millions of unemployed, overlooked workersįor too long I was one of the 70+ million workers who are being systematically overlooked by America's employers, as described in a recent analysis by and Accenture. One recruiter literally told me that even though I was able to do the work, I couldn't be hired because I did not have a degree. I knew I had the skills, and recruiters agreed, but it didn't seem to matter. I pored over classified ads and applied for hundreds of computer-related jobs, but never got an interview. My dreams and aptitude took me to college, but due to personal and financial hardship, I had to leave a few credits short of a degree.Įven so, my mentors and professors were confident I could secure an entry-level job: I had mastered several programming languages and should've easily found work as an entry-level programmer or a field representative fixing computers. ![]() In high school, my guidance counselor advocated for me to join a new computer programming class (which back then was reserved for boys, shockingly enough), and I quickly became a tutor to the other students. By 10 years old, I was pulling apart and reassembling a Commodore 64. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower ![]() Personal Loans for 580 Credit Score or Lower Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit
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