Promoting skills-based hiring to help federal, state, and local governments address their most pressing workforce challenges by creating opportunities for workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs).
Federal, state, and local governments are facing severe labor shortages. They are struggling to find the skilled talent needed to deliver services and realize the promises made to their constituents.
This skills gap is really an opportunity gap. By focusing on skills rather than pedigree when hiring, the public sector can tap more than 70 million STARs – half the US workforce – who have the skills needed for many of these jobs but are often screened out by degree requirements.
Opportunity@Work helps government leaders understand the critical role STARs can play in their hiring strategies and in their region’s workforce. We work with those leaders to implement hiring practices that will help government entities and regional businesses find the skilled, diverse talent they need.
To address Maryland’s labor shortage, Governor Larry Hogan signed an executive order to remove degree requirements from most state jobs in 2022.
19,000 Number of jobs from which Maryland removed degree requirements | 1.3 million Number of STARs in Maryland who got the opportunity to apply for those jobs | 41 Number of STARs in Maryland who got the opportunity to apply for those jobs |
Read our Center for American Progress article on why skills-based practices can spur an equitable recovery in the state and local government workforce by ensuring that positions are open to all qualified applicants.
Read our WorkShift opinion piece on why college can’t be the only path to the middle class, and why further investment in alternative routes is key to expanding paths to the middle class and the economic mobility of STARs in our workforce.
Read our Brookings Institute blog post explaining how states are tearing the ‘paper ceiling’ and making good jobs available to workers without degrees.
Watch our testimony before the congressional subcommittee for US Education and the Workforce about the need to transition to a skills-based economy.
Watch Maryland’s former Governor Larry Hogan’s fireside chat at the JFF Horizons conference about implementing bipartisan policies to create a more inclusive job market.
Interested in working with Opportunity@Work on a public sector workforce issue? Contact us:
