The rapidly changing world of work presents a flurry of unanswered questions for us all. Take underemployment, which refers to people working in jobs for which they are overqualified. This topic has garnered attention over the years, with researchers illuminating how one in three Americans is underemployed. The prevalence of underemployment raises the question of who is being affected and for how long. Perhaps most importantly, how might we better prepare all students to launch into careers with long-term success? It’s not easy to disentangle these questions from conversations about the skills gap, wage stagnation, and the potential effects of artificial intelligence and automation on our workforce. For this reason, we at the Strada Institute for the Future of Work hope to begin identifying some of the signals through the noise.

Our initial findings have sparked our desire for more information. The rest of this series will seek to illuminate further the dynamics of occupations, skills, and credentials as they relate to working learners. We will outline challenges and misalignments in the education-to-career pipeline and discuss solutions to remedy these gaps by relying on granular insights from Burning Glass’ databases of jobs, skills, and careers. We’re deeply curious about how work will evolve in the coming decades, and we hope you’ll join us in our exploration of the future of learning and work.