"Can California Import Enough College Graduates to Meet Workforce Needs?" is out site of the day

The Public Policy Institute of California has released today a report that concludes that California will not be able to "import" its way out of a shortage of educated workers. As our state's economy is more reliant than ever on skilled immigrants, we are also less attractive as a destination to those who would come from out of state.

"Can California Import Enough College Graduates to Meet Workforce Needs?" by Hans P. Johnson and Deborah Reed, is a 24 page report that should be read by serious policy makers in the state and at least glanced at by those who have any interest in politics and public policy in our state. It is replete with interesting graphs and charts, so that even without close reading one can get the major points.

The essence to be distilled for policymakers? "The state would be ill-advised to rely solely on migration to fulfill projected labor demands and, more than ever, should redouble its efforts to raise college entrance and graduation rates among its own residents." To underscore this, the authors state that California "may have to rein in expectations about what the economy will look like in 20 years" because of this.

“Public policy has a critical role to play because the vast majority of California’s college students are attending public institutions,” says author Hans Johnson. “The state has significant latitude to implement policies that could directly address participation and completion rates—and if there was ever a time to do that, it’s now.”

Some of the other points raised by this report:

• By 2025, only 32 percent of the state’s working-age adults will have a college degree—up a single percentage point from 2005 (31%). However, the latest economic projections indicate that two of every five jobs (41%) will require a college degree—up from one-third in 2005.

• In the past decade, net gains in skilled workers from other parts of the U.S. have diminished, and even gone negative, because California is increasingly unable to retain its own college graduates: Between 2000 and 2005, 612,000 college-educated migrants came to California from other states but 658,000 college-educated California residents moved out—a net loss of 46,000 college graduates.

• The population of immigrants with college degrees has grown almost thirty-fold since 1960, and foreign-born residents now make up 31 percent of all California’s college graduates ages 25 to 64. Recent immigrants are also among the best educated ever to arrive in California: One-third of those who came between 2000 and 2005 had college degrees.

• The realities working against increased migration to California include difficulty in changing federal immigration law, fast-growing competition for skilled workers from other states and countries, and California’s exceptionally high housing prices.

• California’s college graduates are increasingly likely to come from India, with the Philippines and China remaining important sources as well.

The Public Policy Institute of California is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving public policy in California through independent, objective, nonpartisan research on major economic, social, and political issues.