Editorial: Report deserves follow-up studies

Some college students about to graduate into the recession might look for any blip of news… Some college students about to graduate into the recession might look for any blip of news from Pittsburgh’s job market to satisfy their aching fears of impending joblessness.

If your situation seems similar, take it slow.

Be careful not to take more from what you’ve read recently than is reasonable, especially when you read that the city’s young workers are among the best educated. It might mean good things for Pittsburgh’s future, but the observation alone doesn’t allow you to conclude your job is already secured.

The Pittsburgh Economic Quarterly reported last week that Pittsburgh boasts one of the nation’s most educated young workforces.

According to Christopher Briem, the report author who examined 2009 surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau, the proportion of Pittsburgh workers aged 25 to 34 with bachelor degrees or higher ranks fifth among 40 metropolitan workforces.

As Boston leads the country with 56 percent, Pittsburgh tops New York and Philadelphia with its 48 percent.

Looking at the concentration of graduate-level degrees in that age group, Pittsburgh ranks highest among the 40 cities.

Also according to the study, a smaller percentage of Pittsburgh’s young workforce is without a high school diploma than that of any other city.

In an indirect sense, the news bodes well for the city’s future, especially if the city continues to attract educated young workers.

Scholars have long associated education with societal benefits.

It’s not only Pittsburgh’s Jeffersonian ideal of democracy that could benefit (i.e., an educated city spawns educated voters). Over time, regions with highly educated workforces find wage increases for all workers, according to a report from Arizona State University’s 2005 Productivity and Prosperity Project.

In addition, the Project notes that by increasing the concentration of college degrees among the labor force, a region lowers crime rates and social services expenditures, while improving civic participation and personal health.

It’s clear that regardless of what produced Pittsburgh’s substantial proportion of college degrees — whether it was the large number of postsecondary schools in the city or movements of less educated workers to other areas — an educated future is a bright one.

But what’s uncertain from Briem’s study is how recent and soon-to-be graduates will fare pursuing their first jobs.

For the study to be meaningful for these graduates, a central question deserves an answer: Are they indeed getting jobs?

More specifically, has Pittsburgh’s well-educated young workforce retained enough jobs during the recession for upperclassmen to look at the local market with justified hope? Do the retained jobs require degrees in anything other than technical fields?

As Pittsburgh Regional Alliance vice president of market research Jim Futrell indicates, business success over the past two years was limited mainly to the engineering, architecture and financial services sectors.

Research has yet to investigate such questions, but until it does, students shouldn’t fill themselves with potentially false hope.

It’s not enough to say educated young workers exist. It’s more to say Pittsburgh businesses can pay them.