It’s no secret that workers are in short supply in many fields—even those that pay well. Lightcast is out with a report this week that emphasizes that this problem isn’t cyclical, but the result of major demographic and cultural shifts that won’t change anytime soon. It’s the steady counterpart to the Great Resignation.

The Great Shrinking, if you will. 

To the initiated, the general thrust of the data will be familiar: Baby boomers are retiring much faster than expected, many working-age men are unable to work or are choosing to sit out the job market, and increasingly educated young adults don’t want or are overqualified for a lot of the jobs on offer.All that means that while the labor force is technically growing, it’s shrinking relative to our population.

The new report is chock-full of data, but a few points stand out:

  • Over the next eight years, population growth in the U.S. is expected to outpace labor force growth by 8 to 1, creating an even greater imbalance between the demand for goods and services and the workers to supply them.
  • The country is expected to add just 2.6M prime-age (25 to 54 years) workers between 2022 and 2032—a tenth of what we saw in the 1970s.
  • Two-thirds of those new workers are expected to have four year-degrees—while the highest demand will be for jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s in the food industry, care services, and construction.

This analysis dovetails with another recent report, out of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, which found colleges are falling far short on graduating students qualified for middle-skill jobs.

The Big Idea: Mismatches between the supply of knowledge and skills and the demand for them is frustrating for Americans who are looking to use education as a way to move up economically. And it’s one reason about 40% of bachelor’s degree holders start out underemployed. 

Such mismatches also are bad for the basic delivery of goods and services. If you thought supply-chain snarls and short-staffed hospitals were a thing of the past, Ron Hetrick, a VP and senior labor economist at Lightcast, and his colleagues suggest you think again. “Already, the demand dwarfs the supply—imagine what will happen as a growing and aging population needs more food, and more housing,” they write. 

“The shortages and inconveniences of 2021 and 2022 gave the U.S. an excellent glance into its future.” At least if we don’t act. 

But Wait—Can’t Robots Fix This? The Lightcast analysis suggests a range of possible solutions—including many within the education sphere, such as rethinking the programmatic mix at colleges, boosting earn-and-learn opportunities, and getting more adults who aren’t working into reskilling programs. The authors don’t put much faith in artificial intelligence to fill these roles, however.

“The tools simply aren’t there yet,” they write, “and the industries most in need of workers are those least likely to be replaced with AI.”

That said, AI’s impacts are still a big question mark. The fast food industry has been experimenting with AI ordering, and the tech is already taking on many call center roles in places like the Philippines. Brent Orrell, a workforce development expert and senior fellow at AEI, does see a near-term possibility for robots to automate some of the most dangerous and physically repetitive jobs.

“Robots are coming for some jobs, and for that, we can be profoundly grateful,” he recently wrote.

And as the story above shows, AI is already helping to improve job matching, especially for those without a four-year degree.

While some of the most hard-to-fill jobs are low-paying and repetitive, others could be the kinds of jobs people want. The Georgetown analysis, for example, identified 107 different middle-skill occupations that only required a certificate or associate degree—and that were also high-paying.

And in almost every major metro area, colleges weren’t producing enough graduates to fill them.

Goodbye Status Quo: The demographic reality the country faces will require a new kind of creativity and flexibility from both colleges and employers, the Lightcast analysis finds. That message may be getting through at more community colleges. 

“We’re seeing a much-needed awareness that the design of our colleges needs to be not from the inside out, but the outside in,” says Karen Stout, president and CEO of Achieving the Dream.

Colleges from Oceanside, Calif., to Eunice, La., to Brooklyn are reworking the certificates and degrees they offer based on local demand, she says. And as dual enrollment grows in popularity, colleges are reshaping those programs to focus more on middle-skill pathways.

Some of this change is being driven by federal and state investments.

For example, a year ago Texas rolled out a new community college funding formula that emphasizes “credentials of value” and greater alignment between college programs and the state’s high-growth jobs. Alabama, meanwhile, has become perhaps the national leader in rethinking how its community colleges interact with industry—moving toward competency-based education and building a statewide talent marketplace that connects students, workers and would-be ones, and employers based on skills. 

And the federal government—through investments like those in the CHIPS and Science Act, and to a growing extent from the Energy Department and the Pentagon—has provided substantial support to community colleges to build programs and other capacity to support in-demand middle-skill jobs.

“Those programs are requiring colleges to look at their offerings in a new way—not only their own programs but other community colleges in their region, four-years, and even other sub-associate certificate providers, both nonprofit and in some cases for-profit,” Stout says.

Employers are also going to have to stretch. Hetrick and his co-authors point to promising examples like a Texas-based company that matches manufacturing workers and companies with “gig-like flexibility” to give people more control over their schedules. The company has attracted a different profile of factory worker—almost 50% are members of minority groups and 66% are between the ages 20 and 40. 

In the end, the authors conclude there won’t be one answer. “In building a future-ready workforce, flexibility is key.”