Having a college education may be more important than ever before for job-seekers in Utah and around the U.S. A new report from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce shows that 41 percent of the online job postings in Utah are for positions that require at least a four-year college degree.
Dr. Tony Carnevale, an economist and lead author of the report, said Utah's high-tech job growth is not keeping pace with most states.
"The sure thing we know," said Carnevale. "In the long haul, is you do more and more high tech and more and more white collar professional, and Utah is below average in that regard."
Carnevale said the research involved analyzing more than 28,000 online job ads in the state, and several million across the country, to see which career fields are the most promising by state. He added, most college-level job listings in Utah are for software and application developers, and computer occupations.
Carnevale said the report underscores the need to go to college in order to get a good job, but also to get a degree that is directly related to the field of work.
"The texture of what employers are looking for is changing, in the sense that they're much more focused on specialization and degree specialization," he said. "They care what you majored in college, as much as they care whether or not you went."
The report said jobs in engineering and health care fields figured prominently in online ads across the country.