College-Educated Workers Now Produce More Than Half of the Nation’s Annual Economic Value, According to New Georgetown University study: “The findings contradict the fear that good manufacturing jobs of the past are being replaced with low – paid, dead-end service jobs (Washington, D.C., April 13, 2015) – College-educated workers make up only 32 percent of the workforce but now produce more than 50 percent of the nation’s economic output, up from 13 percent in 1967, according to a detailed historical analysis of industry data by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. The dramatic increase in the economic value generated by college-educated workers is directly linked to the rise of a college-educated service economy.The Georgetown study finds that the mass production of standardized goods and services has been replaced by more complex consumer demands that include quality, variety, customization, convenience, production speed, innovation, and novelty. College-educated workers and flexible technologies have allowed the United States to achieve this rich mix of economic value at reasonable prices. The study also provides an explanation for the collapse of high-wage manufacturing jobs that on offered opportunity to high school graduates and the rise of an even greater number of high-wageservice jobs that require college degrees.Since the end of World War II, the share of goods-producing jobs plummeted from 50 percent to less than 20 percent of all jobs while the overall economyadded more than 80 million new jobs—meaning that the entire growth was due to new jobs in high – wage high – skill service industries such as finance, insurance, advertising, consulting, computers, education, and healthcare. This transition from a goods-producing to a service-oriented economy would not have been possible without tremendous increases in manufacturing productivity. Output per person in manufacturing almost tripled from $100,000 to $300,000 in real terms, while manufacturing employment decreased from 40 percent to 10 percent of all jobs. In turn, manufacturing’s productivity was driven by its better – educated workforce: the proportion of college – educated manufacturing workers grew from 20 percent to more than 50 percent. While the share of jobs in goods-producing industries declined overall since 1967 in the U.S. workforce, the share of workers with a four-year college degree or more increased from 13 percent to32 percent. Over 60 percent of the workforce now has at least some college education, up from just one-quarter of adults. High-wage jobsfor workers with no more than a high school education disappeared with the decline of manufacturing. During the same period the share of college jobs more than doubled and the collegewage premium–the average salary of a college graduate compared to a high school graduate–went from 40 percent to 80 percent.”