After 20 years of declining opportunity, the economic mobility for STARS – people ‘skilled through alternative routes’ other than a four-year degree – is on an upward trajectory. They are now getting greater access to good-paying jobs and promotions, thanks to a movement toward skills-first hiring, according to a new report released this morning by nonprofit Opportunity@Work, The State of the Paper Ceiling.

Opportunity@Work says that the “invisible barrier that comes at every turn for workers without a bachelor’s degree” has acted as a “paper ceiling” for decades, trapping these individuals in low-wage jobs.

To increase opportunities for those STARS, the organization, along with the Ad Council, launched its Tear the Paper Ceiling initiative in September of 2022 to highlight the talent of more than 70 million working-age adults in the U.S. with valuable job skills but no college degree.

The coalition counts more than 200 partners, including WorkingNation, and 26 states committed to removing degree barriers.

The State of the Paper Ceiling

The State of the Paper Ceiling finds the tide is shifting. Workers are not just being assessed and valued for having a college degree. Skills matter.

“Between 2000 and 2020, STARs systematically lost access to 7.5 million jobs. STARs were finding less access to the middle- and high-wage jobs that had historically offered mobility opportunities from lower-wage roles where they had built transferable skills,” according to the report.

Now, employers are increasingly seeing the value of skills gained outside of a four-year degree and STARS “have regained more than 750,000 jobs lost in the past two decades.”

More specifically, the report notes that 38% of employers are adapting the guiding principals of the Tear the Paper Ceiling initiative, with 83% of these employers more likely than they were two to three years ago to hire skilled workers without college degrees.

“This report shows what is possible when awareness and behavior change together: job postings are measurably more open to STARs than in the early 2000s.

“Skills-first hiring isn’t a theory – it’s starting to work where and when it is fully embraced,” says Byron Auguste, CEO of Opportunity@Work.

“If we want our country to grow together – not apart – amid transformative technological and economic change, the starting point is to value all skills. And if we value all skills, STARs will rise,” says Auguste.

STAR Mobility Compass

Additionally, the report states, Opportunity@Work’s STAR Mobility Compass shows it’s possible to open STARs’ access to 10 million higher-paid jobs with higher potential for mobility in the next five years.

The report suggests three ways to leverage a STAR’s skills to achieve greater economic mobility by 2030:

• Increase access: hiring rates for STARs are boosted across 30 target occupations – including software developer and diagnostic technician.
• Increase wages: five low-wage, but highly skilled occupations where STARs are overrepresented receive higher wages. Among them – retail salespersons, nursing and home health aides, and childcare workers.
• New-to-world jobs: STARs fill shares of high-wage roles predicted to emerge in the next five years – including AI operations manager and prompt engineer.

“We can close the opportunity gap and unlock economic mobility for millions of STARs across America, enabling at least one million working adults to translate their learning into earning – generating a $100 billion boost in annual earnings over the next decade,” according to The State of the Paper Ceiling report.

Summarizing past progress, the report says more than 500,000 job postings were open to STARs in the partnership network in 2024.

Opportunity@Work encourages all employers to further embrace skills-first hiring to create a “much-needed pathway to economic security for half of American workers, regardless of background or geography.”

It praises those who have already implemented this hiring strategy.

“The commitment demonstrated by leaders across the public and private sectors reflects a deep belief in the value of every worker’s skills and potential,” says Papia Debroy, Opportunity@Work’s chief impact officer.

A Critical Time for Workers and the Economy

In a statement accompanying the report, Opportunity@Work makes the case that the “this shift in fortunes for STARs comes at a critical time for the U.S. labor market, which faces unprecedented transformation due to generative AI, potential economic headwinds from tariffs and trade tensions, and persistent division across socioeconomic lines.

“In this environment of uncertainty, skills-first hiring offers a rare point of bipartisan support in the public sector – and with growing adoption in companies across industries.

Past economic downturns have disproportionately harmed STARS, who were often the first to lose jobs and the last to be rehired, often with stricter credential requirements blocking their return.”

You can read the full The State of the Paper Ceiling report here.
WorkingNation continues to report extensively on the skills-first hiring movement. You can find our ongoing coverage here.