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CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: So my name is Christian Kaylor, and I work for
the employment department.
And many, many years ago in the '90s at some point, somebody
created my job.
And they said, wow, we have all these statistics.
We have all this tax data, revenue data, GDP data, wage data, salary
data, income tax data, property tax data.
There's a tremendous amount of public information out there.
And we need somebody who can kind of know it and then answer
questions about it in Portland.
And so my position was created.
And people call me up and they ask me silly questions about the
economy, hopefully questions that have an answer with a
statistic on it.
And then I look it up for them, or I have it, often.
Or I tell them that nobody knows what that number is.
So those are some of the three options.
And I've been doing this for a long time.
And it's a great job.
And so what I start out doing, especially with the younger folks,
is mentioning--
I usually mention it later--
I myself started at Lane Community College.
I didn't start, I wasn't born there.
But I started at Sacred Heart Hospital and--
[LAUGHTER]
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: About 18 years later, I continued my education at
Lane Community College in Eugene, which is a great institution.
And it meant a lot to me.
My family's income was, well, let's say lower
end, not exactly poor.
I had to work through school.
That was fine.
I really like working.
I had a good work ethic.
But I knew that if I wanted to do really cool jobs like that job I
have today, I needed a college degree.
I didn't know what it was going to be in.
And I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up.
LCC was perfect for me.
It really was.
And it still hurts me today, because I sort of run around and
are people are like, well, community colleges--
anyway.
So because I was working, that was kind of my primary thing, I had to
schedule carefully.
And so I had to sort of take the classes that fit my work schedule,
not the other way around, unfortunately.
And there was a class, it was 8 AM Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
It was Economics 101.
And I took it, and I liked it.
And I did well in it.
And a lot of students were like, wow, this class is hard.
It's really boring.
It doesn't make any sense.
I was like, oh, I think it's kind of an interesting class.
I really like it.
I got an A. That's a nice, unusual twist.
So I said, well, what's the next?
Oh, Economics 102.
OK.
I'll try that one.
Oh, what's after that?
103.
OK, what's after that?
Well, 201, or whatever.
And it just sort of kept going.
And then at some point, I think, when I transferred to the
University or Oregon they said I had to pick a major when I was a
junior or something.
I actually did this.
I looked at my transcript and I said, why do I keep getting As in
these economics classes?
Because I'm not getting them in these other classes I'm taking.
And so it sort of--
literally, this happened.
I knew I was doing well in those classes.
They also challenged me much more, so I was working harder to sort of
earn that grade.
But I was happy to do it.
And so accidentally in December 12, 1998, I found myself with a
degree in economics from the University of Oregon.
I went on-- there was a brand new little company, a scrappy little
company, called Google.
It only had about 10 employees.
And I should've applied to work there.
I didn't.
But I had some friends who were computer programmers in the
computer science department.
They said, oh, Google's great.
Ask Jeeves?
Forget about Ask Jeeves.
Forget about Yahoo.
It's only on Google.
So I went on Google.
I typed in Oregon economist job.
And the first thing that popped up is this job,
actually, that I have today.
I applied for it.
It got lost for a couple of years because of some furloughs or
something in the HR department.
That's actually true.
And then they called me in 2000 and said if you're still
interested, we'd love to have you.
So it's a great job.
And part of it comes back to a fundamental question.
What does an economist do?
What do economists do?
We study the economy.
And then, again, there's just this fundamental--
what is an economy?
An economy is an answer.
And the question is, who gets stuff?
Scarce resources, an excellent example.
Food, water, cars.
Who goes to PCC?
Who goes to Harvard?
Who can't afford to go to school?
Who gets health care?
Who dies of a preventable disease?
These are all things that we deal with that are decide--
this is all determined by something we call an economy.
And sometimes you have Medicare and Social Security and these sort
of non-private sector animals out in it.
And you have private sector.
It's a decision that's being made about who gets the stuff and who
doesn't get the stuff.
And that's all an economy is.
But that's a very big thing to be.
It's a very big thing to be.
And so it's fascinating, endlessly fascinating, for me to study that
and say, OK, who gets what and why and who doesn't.
And when we make a policy change, who does better
and who does worse?
I find that just endlessly fascinating.
And I'm kind of surprised everybody isn't an economist.
Because I discovered actually--
this is sort of a pet theory I'm working on--
one of the reasons people like TV detective shows, right, is because
everybody kind of wants to be a cop.
Everybody kind of wants to catch the bad guy by outthinking and
outsmarting and being a detective.
And the reason why we watch medical shows, like House, is
everybody kind of wants to be a--
everybody, I think, inside of us we have these little jobs we'd
like to be in certain idealized ways.
We'd like to be a doctor.
We'd like to be a lawyer.
Or we'd like to be a prosecutor on--
oh, when you watch Law and Order we say, well, if I was in for the
jury I wouldn't say that, I would say this.
We like to sort of pretend a little bit.
I think everybody's an economist.
And the reality is some of us are good at it and some of
us are bad at it.
But we're all economists, because we all have to make these economic
decisions about what we're going to do.
And oftentimes, we make the wrong decisions even with the best
intentions.
So economists have lots of tools in our toolbox.
And one of the most famous ones most of you probably heard of is
something called a cost benefit analysis.
OK.
So here's cost, and here's benefit.
And the reality is everyone in this room is running cost benefit
analyses all the time.
So most of you are nodding.
This is good.
I think, honestly, with younger folks they go--
when you make a decision should I rent or should I buy?
Should I stick with the house or should I sell it?
Should I live further away where the rent is cheaper, but have to
commute further and pay more in gas and parking?
Or should I live close to where I work and--
these are all trade off conversations we're having in our
head continually about what we want to do with our lives that
involve a cost benefit analysis.
What's the benefit?
What's the cost?
And so economists do this typically more with policy issues
of should we develop this land over here.
I'm on an advisory committee for West Hayden Island.
And what's the cost and benefit of bulldozing 300 acres of wildlife
and fish and bird area and paving it?
I have a bias on that one.
But there are numbers involved.
Should we build the building over here?
Should we build a condo?
Should we not?
How do we zone it?
These are all cost benefit analyses.
What we like to do is take these policy issues, these big issues
and even these small issues, and try to quantify them, put metrics
to them, measure them, and make a rational decision about
what to do with them.
I'm on a forecasting committee that looks out 10 years to the
economy of 2022 in Oregon.
And we look at all the regions and all the industries and all the
occupations.
And we try, and fail, but we try to forecast where manufacturing is
going to go, where health care is going to go, where retail is going
to go, what are the trends that are going on, so that community
colleges, workforce development partners, we can all sort of plan
on how, as a government policy, we can all sort of get there.
I looked at that 400 page report and I said, nobody but a weirdo
like me is ever going to read a 400 page report on an economic
forecast for the Oregon economy.
So I made a one page summary for you.
And you have it in front of you.
I made this for a woman named Kirby Johnston.
I don't know if anybody here remembers Kirby Johnston.
This is another name from blast from the past.
So Kirby worked at Worksystems.
And she, more than 10 years ago now, called me up or emailed me
and she said, hey, what are the top 10 fastest
growing jobs in Portland?
Is it nurse?
Is it janitor?
Is it Starbucks barista?
What is it?
What are the top 10?
Because you gave me this 400 page report, and I can't get to page
three without falling asleep.
It looks like a phone book.
It was just like phone book.
I didn't blame her.
And she said, what are the top 10, in the Portland area, fastest
growing jobs?
And so we had a conversation about that.
And unfortunately, the top 10 fastest growing jobs are mostly
sort of minimum wage service jobs.
And she said, well, I'm really working on some workforce
development stuff.
Janitor, number one.
Waitress, number two.
This is not exactly what I'm looking for.
And so we put our heads together.
And I think it was Kirby that really figured out, give me a list
of all the jobs that require a bachelor's degree or more, or
require an associate's degree or more.
I forget how it went exactly.
And so I made a newer list.
It was a lot better.
And so she liked that list more.
And so over the years coming to community colleges, what I used to
do is I handed it out.
It used to be, I think, the top 10 fastest growing jobs we saw over
the next 10 years in the Portland area.
And people would come up to me and they'd say, well, I really, really
wanted to be a veterinarian.
It's not on your list.
And I go, well, if I went to 15, maybe it would be.
I mean, I didn't know.
So I made the list longer and longer.
And I got up to about 50.
I got up to about 50 a couple years ago.
And it was pretty small print.
It got up to 50.
And I would hand that out to these job seekers, these teenagers who
are trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up, that
are here at the community college.
And it was actually about a year or two ago.
I was out at the East campus on 82nd and Division.
And this girl in front of me as soon as she got it she stopped
listening to me, which is OK.
I'm boring.
She got out her pen, and she just started highlighting jobs she
might be interested in.
And I thought, boy.
You know, I'm going to see how many I can squeeze onto
one sheet of paper.
So now you have to suffer through the 7 point font.
It's two different ways.
So I laid it out a couple of different ways so people could
kind of make a choice.
These are the fastest growing jobs we see in the Portland area.
On the right, is the fastest.
2000 plus openings on the right column.
The left column's pretty good.
It's still pretty good openings, but a slower pace.
I then also ordered it two other ways, higher wage jobs, higher up,
lower wage jobs, lower down.
There's a wide range here on salary.
And then I did a third thing, which is really the key to the
whole sucker.
If the job requires a bachelor's degree, I bolded it.
So you'll notice a pattern real quick.
And the eyes love to find patterns like that, especially when it's
only one page and not a 400 page report.
And so this is now 140 jobs, sorry.
But I wanted to be able to show people there are a lot of
opportunities out there, higher wage, lower wage, medium wage.
And these are where we see the most job openings over the next 10
years, not just because of business is expanding but turnover
as the baby boomers are retiring, new positions being open.
So you'll notice, for instance, middle school teacher, high school
teacher, elementary school teacher is on here more because of the
turnover we're forecasting from the baby boomers
leaving those jobs.
So you have your cheat sheet.
I will cheat a little more and just ask you questions you don't
necessarily know the answers to.
What is the average wage in the Portland area for a person who
works full time but only has a high school diploma?
SPEAKER 1: $20,000, $25,000.
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: About $25,000.
And you've got a cheat sheet in front of you.
Although, this side's a little rougher.
The flip side is really the wage detail from our
occupational survey.
It's not the same jobs, although you see mostly overlap.
This is 140 some, I forget, of the most common jobs in the Portland
area out of 800 that we tracked, by the way.
And this is the average wage for each of them.
I didn't bold these by bachelor's degree.
Anybody want to guess what the average salary is for a full time
worker with a bachelor's degree or more in the Portland area?
SPEAKER 2: $55,000?
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: $55,000.
So it works out to about $20,000 maybe $25,000.
Because high school graduates don't tend to work
full time as often.
And people with college degrees tend to work-- so it tends to be a
gap of about $25,000.
So what I'm going to do for benefit over here--
I think I usually do this after cost but it'll be OK--
is $25,000.
How long is the average career?
Getting longer.
Put your retirement off because you can't afford it.
SPEAKER 3: --social security.
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: Huh?
SPEAKER 3: 35 years.
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: Yeah.
35 years.
I like to do, especially with the kids, just kind
of nice round numbers.
They can't do the math either, so it doesn't really matter.
I like to do 40 years.
I mean, you know, say you graduate at 25, you retire at 65.
Who knows?
Who knows what it'll be?
It'll probably by 50 in about 10 or 20 years here.
But does anybody of the top of their head know what
25,000 times 40 is?
SPEAKER 4: 1 million.
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: It's $1 million.
So you know, you're going to make some amount of money even if you
don't go to college.
On average, you'll make more money if you go to college because
you'll get a job that pays better on average.
Some people don't.
If you're looking on average over a career or 40 years, you're
looking at a benefit of about $1 million.
I usually do this second because first I do the cost.
And let me tell you, community college kids are really good at
this side of it.
What's the number one cost for going to college?
Wrong, but interesting.
And I don't know, when I went to a community college
back in the mid '90s--
it was early '90s--
it was really cheap.
I think it was $77 a credit at Lane Community College in the
early '90s.
Ballpark annual full time tuition here?
It's about $5,000 here.
We're just going to ballpark it , three or four quarters.
So that's at $5,000 per year.
This is actually not the most expensive part of going to
community college.
What's the most expensive part?
SPEAKER 5: Housing cost?
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: No.
SPEAKER 6 : Lost wages.
SPEAKER 7 : You're not working.
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: You've got to work.
You've got to put the food on the table, pay the rent, get the gas
in the car tank, guys.
SPEAKER 8 : Living expenses.
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: I rode a bike.
I do like riding my bike.
But come on, I couldn't afford a car.
I was poor.
I couldn't afford a car.
I just working to pay the rent, so I could go to
this community college.
So if you look at your living expenses it's tricky.
An opportunity cost is how economists usually think of it.
That is, what's the next best thing?
Instead of being here listening to a boring government economist
ramble at you about statistics and abstract concepts, I could be out
making some amount of money at a job.
Maybe it's minimum wage, which in Oregon is creeping
up on $10 an hour.
Washington, even slightly higher about $10 an hour.
Full time, $10 an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.
You're looking at about $18,000 a year, probably not even that.
But I'll round it off even higher, $20,000 a year.
Because there's always somebody in class that's like, well, I can
make $12 an hour roofing.
OK, fine.
You make $12 an hour roofing.
But those are the opportunities that people are looking at
especially at a community college environment.
Well, I could be here, or it could be working.
So if you're--
SPEAKER 9 : But most students now are doing both.
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: Yeah.
I did both.
But they'd be making more.
I mean, when their boss says, I need you to come in on Friday for
this big event, they go, I can't because I've got to take a class
in theoretical basket weaving.
And the boss goes, do you want a job or do you want an education?
I had that conversation for years.
I had that conversations for years.
Your students are, too.
These students are looking at a giving a lot of time, a lot of
hours at the restaurant, or the deli, or the catering
business, or whatever.
It could easily be $20,000 per year you're looking at--
times four--
equaling an $80,000 opportunity cost.
And so what you have is students making a very--
I'm laying this out for you folks.
But I got to tell you, they get this like this if
you talk to the kids.
That's a lot of money. $80,000 is a lot of money left on the table
for an education.
And I got a cousin who just graduated from college last year
and he's still looking for work.
Why should I get a college degree?
And I've been there, personally.
My brother was there.
I mean, I lived it.
And it's a challenge.
If you're driving your parents 20-year-old Toyota Corolla they
gave to you rather than scrap, and you're living in a room waiting to
use the bathroom in the morning because you've got five roommates
in your house--
I mean, this is what people are dealing with here.
And your boss says, if you want to make some extra money come in on
Friday and do some extra work.
And you go, oh, but I got a test.
I mean, that's a really tough decision to make.
So $80,000 in opportunity cost, plus the $5,000.
You do two years here, that's $10,000.
You're going to transfer to probably PSU.
By the way, a majority of the students at PSU who graduate do
not start at PSU.
Now, I don't know if it's all PCC.
I'm sure it's a bulk.
PSU is basically a feeder school for other schools to come into for
people to finally graduate.
That's what it is.
And I heard that from the president, so I think they're
aware of it.
Neat stat, I didn't know it was that high.
So you transfer there, you're tuition goes triple, quadrupole.
Tuition, this, you're easily looking at $150,000.
And if somebody says, hey, I really want to go to Lewis and
Clark, I want to go to Reed, I want to go to Willamette or
something, this can easily be $150,000--
I can't write-- plus.
That's a lot of money.
But that's even more money.
You're talking about 7 to 1.
Now, I didn't invent this.
I didn't figure this out.
This is in the academic literature.
So labor economists *** with this stuff with their slide rules in
basements and write papers that only we read.
I mean, the media never picks it up.
Nobody else cares, I guess.
But economists like me scribble out this sort of data.
And we've done this analysis.
We've done longitudinal studies.
We've done it by major.
We've done it by age, race, ethnicity.
We've done it eight ways from Sunday.
And every way it comes out roughly like this.
Some smarter folks than me went through and they said, if you take
a bachelor's degree and you put it up against investing in the stock
market, gold, real estate-- they went down the list--
it wasn't close.
Over a 20, 30 year 40 year period, you name it.
If 20 years ago your Uncle Max gave you $100,000 and said spend
it however you want and you wanted to make that investment grow, the
bachelor's degree beats all of that by an order of magnitude over
any period of time.
The question isn't why is the PCC parking lot so crowded and why are
all these students coming to-- the question is why aren't we seeing
four times the number of people coming.
And that is actually--
and again, in the academic literature among labor economists
with the PhDs who write papers nobody else ever reads, this is
the conversation.
We go, buying a house is part of the American dream.
Getting a bachelor's degree is the best--
you'll make a lot more money over the long run with
a bachelor's degree.
Why aren't more people getting in on that?
Of course, they are.
I mean, the enrollment numbers are going up.
But there's a cost benefit analysis.
And I think we should do this for every student who ever steps foot
in the community college environment day one.
And again, they can pick their occupation.
You want to be a firefighter.
You want to be a veterinarian.
You want to be a computer programmer.
You're going to get very different numbers on that benefit side.
That's been done, too, in the academic literature.
And they're going, yeah, a computer programming major you're
going to make $2 or $3 million more money over your career.
Theater arts major?
$400,000 more.
I'm not making this up.
We've broken all this out.
It's been studied very well.
And the only thing we can figure out is why
wouldn't you go to college?
Why wouldn't you get that bachelor's degree?
But this is a fun exercise.
I don't do it exactly like that.
But you step through it and you see kids going this tuition check
is a big chunk out of my income, but that is worth it.
That's going to keep them going.
And we're not having that conversation.
So you have this handout.
And as I made it, I noticed a couple of trends.
So you sort of have it and I kind of badly replicated it here in
PowerPoint form.
And about a tenth of them-- actually a
little more than a tenth.
I think it's about 14 or 15 of these occupations, these 140
occupations, health care.
And you're talking about-- a lot of you know-- an industry that
really loves education and certifications.
It's hard to get a job in health care that doesn't have at least
some sort of--
you know, phlebotomists need a certification.
If you're going to walk in the door, you're going to get
certified by somebody.
And really across the range, people do overlook much lower paid
jobs like home health care aid, nursing aides, but across the
spectrum of education and skills.
And very high returns for our doctor friends at the top.
Another way I sliced and diced it, high tech.
And high tech sort of lives in a number of places and a number of
different ways.
And here, again, I think it was the second most common occupation
that seemed to pop out to me.
And again, wide range.
Computer programmers, even electronic equipment assemblers
and screwdrivers in a factory assembly situation.
So those two kind of stand out.
But again, I like to do this.
My colleague's point out everything's growing.
There's a lot of diversity here.
There's not necessarily a place that we see, you know, whatever
you do, don't train to be a welder.
Whatever.
There are very few of those.
Crabber is maybe on the list.
Logger, I think is not on the list.
But it's actually a very short list.
We look at jobs that we think are kind of going away.
Newspaper delivery boy I think is on the list.
But, in fact, I published an article on it last year, and that
was on the list.
So I did write an article on this.
But generally, across industries, across occupations I frame this
discussion, especially when I talk to people looking at career
retraining, what should I be when I grow up, you have a lot of
opportunities.
And I don't feel comfortable--
and I know the data better than just about anybody, really.
I mean, it's a small room.
Me and three or four other people look at this data daily.
I'm not really comfortable saying, don't do
manufacturing, do high tech.
Do health care, not service.
If somebody has a passion, you should really just encourage them
to go with it.
If they don't have a passion, that's a different conversation.
But this is actually a fairly diverse economic growth forecast
in moving forward.
So there's a lot of opportunities in industries.
And it's why, honestly, I made a list of 147 jobs
and I didn't do 10.
And I've been asked frequently, particularly by Worksystems, what
are the top 10?
Where should we focus very limited training resource dollars towards
getting-- is it welders?
Is it nurses?
And I feel like telling people, hey, you've got 5 choices or 10
choices, is insulting to them.
And it's not accurate looking at the economic trends.
So this goes to your question.
And this graph I stole from a guy who is very, very smart, David
Autor at MIT.
I've been saying this for a while, hopefully someday it'll actually
happen and people will think I was a genius.
But David Autor is a genius.
He's an economist at MIT.
A-U-T-O-R.
I stole this out of a much larger report he wrote.
Which send me an email, I'm happy to send it to you.
He calls it wage polarization.
It's one of the best labor recon papers I've ever read.
It's very readable.
It's not a technical paper particularly.
The title is something, something Wage Polarization.
Wage polarization is diplomatic speak--
please don't fire me-- for wage gap or rich getting richer, poor
getting poorer, middle class shrinking, that sort of
conversation.
So polarization, I guess, is how he titled it.
And he looked at it.
And it was this great work that anybody could kind of jump on.
And most of my graphs I make--
this one you'll see I just cut and paste right out of his report.
This is the value of a college degree.
And let me tell you, I've been working in this
field for 13 years.
And I plan to work here for a lot longer.
You rarely see a trend line that strong.
You really don't.
And this is how much the average American with a bachelor's degree
who was working makes compared to the average American with a high
school degree who was working.
And back in 1964, it was one and a half times.
Back in 1980, it was one and a half times.
Do you notice a trend since 1980?
College degree, you're making twice as much as someone with a
high school degree.
And there's a lot going on here.
Part of it is, again, poor getting poorer lower skill, lower wage
jobs not increasing, not keeping up with inflation very well.
Decrease in unions.
Only about 12% of jobs in the Portland area are union, and most
of them are in this room.
So in the private sector it's even lower.
It's like 5%.
So diminishing of unions, a lot of blue collar jobs being replaced by
automation and manufacturing, global competition, and
outsourcing, there's no one silver bullet answer to this.
There really isn't.
What often gets overlooked, while people talk about that a lot, they
don't talk a lot about the massive increase we've seen in high wage,
high skill jobs.
We have a lot more doctors, a lot more lawyers, a lot more
engineers, a lot more consultants, a lot more computer programmers
than we did in 1980.
So our economy has been developing larger fields.
We always had these positions, even in 1980.
So I don't think people have realized, as a percentage we have
a lot more of them than we used to.
So there's a lot more opportunity at the higher end in these six
figure sort of occupations listed here.
There's a lot of growth there, especially over the last couple of
generations.
So that's kind of exacerbated that gap.
And you are not going to get an interview for any of those jobs
without a bachelor's degree.
It's never going to happen.
It simply will not.
So there's a new fields still being developed.
I just read article yesterday, fascinating article, on the 2012
the Romney campaign.
A journalist was digging the dirt.
After the campaign, everybody gets drunk and they tell the stories.
And the reporters write them up for people that care.
And there's a book coming out next month that had an excerpt.
Data analysis.
Let me tell you, I love data analysis.
And they talk about data analysis.
Huge part of Obama's victory.
The Romney campaign had four data analysts working for it.
The Obama campaign had 54 data analysts microtargeting
communities, ethnicities, geographies to get out the vote,
identify their voters, and get them to vote.
It was a historic victory for a lot of reasons.
And one of the reasons is big data and that analysis.
That is an emerging field.
It's been around for a long time, but it's really blowing up now as
people realize these computers are tracking tons of data.
And we need people to sift through them to find these patterns.
So there's new jobs being created all the time that isn't
even on this list.
So actually, the value of the college degree is much higher.
And I don't know that I hung out with my career counselor in 19--
whenever I graduated from high school.
But let's say my 20th reunion is next month.
I feel like the conversation back then was, well, not everybody's
cut out for college.
Not everybody has to go to college.
And I think you can still say that, but--
and in Oregon people talk about pulling green chain or something
if you hang around a lot of older Oregonians.
But that job no longer exists, by the way.
The number of people who pulled green chain--
half of you are like, what the hell is he talking about?
The half that do know what I'm talking about.
Zero.
Does not exist.
So this is basically picking up logs and putting them on a
conveyor belt.
And a friend of mine, state senator Lee Beyer,
he was in the paper.
He created some call center jobs.
And he goes to the ribbon cutting.
And the reporter says, call center jobs?
These jobs pay like $12 an hour.
They're not good.
And he goes, well, it beats pulling green chain.
Well, Lee Beyer, and I love him, is a nice old guy from
Springfield, who nobody clued him in.
They have a robot arm that does that now.
A human being doesn't go, lift with the knees.
You know?
The workers' comp insurance on that guy?
We're going to go buy a robot arm instead.
It didn't pencil out mathematically.
So we're seeing some really fascinating trending.
And the one I really want to highlight here is the city of
Portland, but across the board.
So in the United States in 2000, 24% of the entire adult
population, 25 to 99 years old, had a bachelor's degree.
In 2011, it shot up to 28.5% In 1970, it was 10% nationally.
And I really want to emphasize that number.
The Portland regional numbers--
or sorry, the Oregon numbers are very, very close to the national
numbers if you go back to about 1930 or 1940.
1940 it was something like 5% or 4%.
Single digits had a bachelor's degree or more.
1970, 10% had a bachelor's degree or more.
I think 1980 is maybe about 15%, but don't quote me on that.
And in fact, I just read a census report from 1970 that said that
people over age 75 only 10% had a high school diploma.
So these are people who were born in the 1880s, 1890s, only about
10% actually finished high school.
So public education was important.
But at some point, like my grandfather, the parents said, we
need you at home working and pulled the kids out of school.
So 100 years ago only 10% of the population maybe had
a high school diploma.
1970 a couple generations ago, 10% of the population had
a bachelor's degree.
Today, in the city of Portland--
I have to be very clear here.
Not the region, the city of Portland.
50% who have a job in the city of Portland have a
bachelor's degree or more.
And we really have to wrap our head around that, because it's
very, very different.
A college degree for generations has been an elite certification.
Elite is the word in both meanings of the word.
Minority--
not many people get it--
and above.
What happens when half the population has
a bachelor's degree?
You get some very weird things happening, which we're seeing now.
I'm talking to folks who entered the labor market in 1970.
They graduated high school, graduated college in 1970.
And when they got a bachelor's degree in 1970, the recruiters
came to the school and said, hey, you look bright, young man, come
work for us.
And now you go to a career fair and it's a different thing.
Because having a bachelor's degree doesn't mean, oh, you have a
bachelor's degree.
Well, come right this way.
Oh, how are you?
You're just going to waltz right through the interview process
because you have a bachelor's degree.
No.
We have the internet now.
I work with these business every day, folks.
When they have job openings, they get scared.
Because what happens?
It's all on the internet now.
So they go, oh, I got a [INAUDIBLE]
Portland.
They can use Craigslist.
They can use the Oregon Employment Department.
It's all the internet, doesn't matter.
You can it Monster.com, you call it Craigslist, whatever.
They go, I'm looking to hire an advertising graphic artist person,
whatever it is.
I mean, I've worked with all these companies.
If I say, I got a job, it pays well, it has good benefits and
it's in Portland, Oregon, I'm going to get resumes from the
entire planet.
And I'm going to say, send me your resume.
I'm an HR manager, I'm scared.
I'm scared.
So they work the back channels before they try
to get to that stage.
Public administration, 25%.
State, federal, local, city, county, whatever.
Government, firefighters, cops, teachers, planners, government
talking folks, economic talking folks, 25% are age 55 that have
the job right now.
Next 10 years, we're going to lose at least that 25%.
I gave this presentation a couple months ago in my own office.
About once a year they go, hey, you work in employment department,
go give it to the staff in the employment department.
It's neat.
And they're great.
I've known them for a long time.
And I gave this.
And Patty Sherman, bless her 65 years old, comes up after I gave
the whole presentation.
I showed this slide.
She goes, 25%?
It's 75% in our office.
And she just starts going, Frank is 67.
Vic is 66.
Dan is 68.
I'm 65.
And she just starts going around the room.
And I was really glad she said it, because I'm sort of like looking
around for room and going--
[LAUGHTER]
CHRISTIAN KAYLOR: 25%?
That number is low.
At middle schools, elementary schools, high schools, people
aren't having kids anymore.
We've got the lowest fertility rate in the United States since
we've been keeping track of the data, since at least 1920.
We're looking at Great Depression levels for
people not having children.
And so we're looking at demographic forecasting on a
committee and we're going, OK, how many schools are we going to need?
How many teachers are we going to need?
We're not going to use many teachers in the future.
But so many of them are baby boomers, schools are going to go
through a hiring boom in the next 5 or 10 years because of all the
retirements.
Same with cops and firefighters and government.
And it gets overlooked a lot.
So I mention this one in every class.
I sort of finish it with this one to be more positive because even
as the economy's been slow-- and it's picking up steam very nicely
now, thank you.
But education, there you go, 25%, public education.
Disproportionate number of baby boomers in those industries.
Across all issues on average is 20%.
So you're look at one in five workers is over age 55.
In the '90s, it was 10% of all workers were over the age 55.
This is just the baby boomer demographic moving through.
This is something we've never had before.
Right now in America, 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day.
More Americans are turning 65 this year than are turning 18.
And this is the first time in our history, centuries, because of
this baby boom demographic moving through, we actually have more
people sort of aging out of the workforce to varying degrees than
aging into the workforce for various reasons--
turns 16,18, 20, finish college.
So the labor market's in a really interesting place to be
potentially pretty tight.
And when we look at the unemployment rates it varies
dramatically by industry education, age, race.
It's very, very different.
You'll notice I've successfully pulled it off.
I hate talking about the unemployment rate for about five
different reasons.
But one of them is it's a generalization of just a lot of
diversity going on.
And people go, what's the unemployment right now?
And I go, if you have a master's degree, it's like 2%.
If you don't have a high school degree or diploma or GED, it's
20-some percent.
Well, is it 24% or 25%?
Who cares?
The point is it's just a radically different number.
Again, I'm surprised at the level at which the community colleges--
I'll just blame everybody in this room--
have failed to--- and by the way, when surveys are done on who you
love, honestly--
they do this, by the way.
I'm sure PCC has done it.
It's been 10, 20 years since I saw this.
But what they'll do is people will do surveys.
Government agents will do surveys and say, how much do you love
Multnomah County Government?
How much do you love the Portland Public Libraries?
How much do you love the Parks and Rec
Department, the City of Portland?
How much do you love Metro?
How much do you love the zoo?
State government, what do you think of state government?
What do you think of the federal government?
What do you think of Congress?
Just confidence, just general taking the temperature.
Number one on that list, it's always been.
Do you know what number one on that list is?
Community colleges.
85-year-olds take photography and cooking classes here.
40-year-olds get worker retraining here.
18-year-olds come here after high school to start college.
They can't afford to go to a nicer school.
You've got the most popular institution here.
And you're doing amazingly beneficial work increasing incomes
dramatically for folks.
And you're like, oh, well.
You know, nothing big.
You should toot your own horn more, honestly, especially as an
educational system.
And you have these people out there, well, college isn't meant
for everybody.
Oh, yeah?
Do you want to take the gamble and not send your kid to college?
Well, hell no.
It's over 90%.
Again, polls.
Pure Research did a pole.
And they said, hey, do you expect your kid to go to college?
It was like 95% of parents expected their
kids to go to college.
I mean, I've shown you a lot of data here, but people are aware of
this fact anecdotally in their own offices that you can't get a job
in the mail room without a bachelor's degree anymore.
And so when they look at their kid they go, you're
going to go to college.
Because the opportunities on the bottom half of this sheet, and
there's plenty of them, waiters, laborers, tellers, cooks,
janitors, bartenders, cashiers, food prep workers, dishwashers,
$25,000 a year, plenty of job opportunities.
And they will continue to be there.
They will not go away.
But who aspires to that?
Nobody.
Two or three months ago, I broke out the average
wage by college major.
And one of the most interesting things about that report-- it was
talking about the census.
I didn't do it.
But one of the most interesting things about that report, they've
ranked all the college majors from highest income to lowest income in
the United States and I think computer science is number one, I
want to say.
The bottom-- let me tell you, there's a race for the bottom.
And I think it was theater.
I think it was theater, guys.
But one of the interesting things about that, even theater majors--
it wasn't $1 million.
It was $400,000, was the net difference.
So they made $400,000 more than they would have with only a high
school diploma on average.
People with theatre degrees are making $400,000 more than the
average high school graduate.
And they said unless you spent more than $400,000 on your degree,
it would've made sense for you to go.
I mean, there's still a benefit even for these low pay majors,
which is kind of the headline of the article.
But anyway, if you're interested in these issues, send me an email.
I'll sign you up for my newsletter.
I'll stick around if you have questions.
You guys have been great.
SPEAKER 10 : Thank you.