Kansas is growing this decade, but the state isn’t ready to meet the demand for degrees

Kansas will add 54,000 jobs that require some level of college education this decade, but the state is poised to fall well short of that demand, one of the state's top labor economists told the Kansas Board of Regents.

To meet the demand, Kansas would need to produce an additional 34,000 degrees by 2030 — a tall order as Kansas continues to see many of its young college graduates move out-of-state for higher paying jobs.

The labor projection, commissioned by the Kansas Board of Regents, was put together by the University of Kansas Institute for Policy and Social Research under the direction of Donna Ginther.

“Given the increase in technology, artificial intelligence and robots, most jobs are going to require some credential,” the distinguished economics professor told the Regents. “The days of jobs for high school graduates only are going away.”

Kansas' degree production isn't keeping up with expanding economy

Between 2020 and 2030, Kansas is adding 54,000 jobs that need a college degree, according to an analysis using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Lightcast, a private labor market analyst.

The mix includes the following:

• 36,500 jobs that require a bachelor’s degree.

• 3,100 jobs that require a master’s degree.

• 3,500 jobs that require a doctoral or professional degree.

• 7,400 jobs that require a post-secondary, non-degree award.

• 3,000 jobs that require an associate’s degree.

• 1,100 jobs that require some level of college education without a degree.

Ginther’s team put together that estimate by looking at the forecasted demand for various professions and evaluating whether those careers typically require degrees.

The demand for 54,000 additional jobs with degree requirements by 2030 represents an approximate 11.2% increase in Kansas.

Compared to other states in the area, that’s a relatively small change. Surrounding states — such as Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas — will cumulatively add 1.6 million jobs that require degrees.

Texas alone accounts for 1.1 million of those job, although Colorado — which has been a destination state for remote working — is expected to see a 203,000, or 21%, increase.

Ginther later added the caveat that economic projections are far from an exact science, and the precise number of 34,000 additional jobs requiring a degree more accurately represented a range of about 25,000 to 40,000.

Kansas sees more educated workers move in than out. But only barely.

Over the 2020s, Ginther’s analysis expects that about 180,000 people with degrees will exit the Kansas labor market by 2030.

That includes workers who retire and those who leave to pursue further education, but particularly concerning is the number of people who leave for better opportunities elsewhere in the country, Ginther said.

Kansas, as it stands, is producing about 37,000 college graduates each year between bachelors, masters and doctoral degree candidates.

But when looking at the longer-term outcomes of those graduates, fewer than half of them remain in Kansas nine years after completing their degrees. The rates are worse as level of education goes up, with less than 1 in 3 doctoral-degree recipients remaining in Kansas after that length of time.

Most of Kansas’ loss of educated workers is for people ages 20 to 35, losing on average about 770 workers in that age range each year between 2017 and 2021. That was more than offset by a net import of 1,092 workers from other states between the ages of 35 and 55.

While ideally the state would keep more of its young graduates, the net migration rate of 321 workers into Kansas — or a tiny fraction of a population of 448,185 college-educated workers — is still positive, if relatively small, Ginther said.

Kansas loses many of its highly educated young people, the economics professor said, but it also imports a lot of highly educated older professionals, suggesting opportunities to do better by the state’s newer generations of workers.

“We’re not losing a lot, but every person counts,” she said.

Kansas isn't paying its educated workers enough to compete with other states

Many workers, and not just from Kansas, relocate to Colorado and Texas in particular, where salaries are bigger even after adjusting for generally higher cost-of-living in those states, Ginther pointed out.

The biggest draw for Kansas’ college-educated young professionals is the Missouri side of Kansas City, but per the institute’s analysis, the Kansas side draws 500 more such workers.

“There’s a lot of crossing the state line in the Kansas City metro,” Ginther said. “From a regional economic perspective, I think of the Kansas City metro as part of Kansas, because it’s all part of one regional economy.”

The reason for many educated workers’ moves across state lines comes down to salary, Ginther explained, and Kansas ranks relatively low compared to neighboring states, even when adjusted for different costs of living.

As an example, a job that pays $104,847 in Kansas is equivalent to a job that pays $113,295 in Texas.

The pay disparities differ by profession, but in general, Kansas is typically, at best, average in terms of salaries.

For business workers, Kansas’ average salary of $88,617 is more than $10,000 below the average in Colorado.

In education, the average salary of $51,764 in Kansas is on par with Texas and Oklahoma but several thousand dollars below Iowa and Nebraska.

The Sunflower State ranks near-dead last for humanities and arts occupations at an average salary of $49,552, compared to more than $60,000 in Texas and Colorado.

Kansas engineers, on average, make $90,230, or nearly $15,000 less than their counterparts in Texas.

How can Kansas keep more of its young people in the state?

Ginther’s projections for the year 2030 operate under the economic assumption of ceteris paribus, or all other things remaining equal.

Only three years into the decade, Ginther told the Regents they and other state policy makers still have time to adjust and create plans to keep more of Kansas’ college graduates in the state.

From their end, they could work more closely with the Kansas State Board of Education and the Kansas Legislature to improve college readiness and reverse a trend of decline in the state’s college-going rate.

The Regents also need to continue its focus on affordability, she said, in tandem with efforts to maintain or even increase the Kansas Legislature’s funding for higher education.

More: Kansas businesses are short workers. What can state government do to help?

Nothing in the institute’s analysis is meant to discount jobs that don’t require advanced degrees, Ginther said.

But with a building boom from the federal Inflation Reduction and CHIPS and Science acts — as well as local megaprojects in the Panasonic electric vehicle battery plant in De Soto,  a computer chip manufacturing plant in Burlington and other renewable energy projects — Kansas workers will need some type of education after high school to find well-paying jobs.

“We need people who can build things, and those are not four-year degrees,” she said. “We need people who can build the wind farms and the solar farms and work in these new manufacturing plants, because the manufacturing is being matured. That’s a skilled technical workforce that KBOR creates through its technical and community education sector.”

However, the main solution to any labor and skill shortages, projected or current, is simple, Ginther said. The labor economist emphasized that prices adjust to clear markets, and if there is a shortage in a particular trade or skill, prices should move to reflect that.

“Kansas pays low wages," she said, "and if you want the best and the brightest, you have to pay for it.”

Rafael Garcia is an education reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at rgarcia@cjonline.com or by phone at ‪785-289-5325. Follow him on Twitter at @byRafaelGarcia.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas projected to be short 34,000 educated workers by 2030