By Anna Helhoski | NerdWallet

More Americans than ever are now educated beyond a high school diploma.

And yet, half of all local labor markets are not on track to meet their own labor demands by 2031, according to a recent report titled “The Great Misalignment” from Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW).

The analysis measured 565 local labor markets in the U.S., all of which have at least one provider of certificates or associate degrees — also known as middle-skills credentials. Researchers found that, in half of all local economies, the number of middle-skills credentials conferred will fall short of meeting expected labor demand through 2031. It projects that at least 50% of all types of middle-skills credentials issued in these markets would need to change to meet those demands.

To provide more insight into the analysis, NerdWallet spoke with one of the authors of the report, Zack Mabel, research professor of education and economics at Georgetown University’s CEW and co-author of the report “The Great Misalignment.”

The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

NerdWallet: What happens when middle-skills credentials and the local labor market don’t align?

Zack Mabel: Employers struggle to recruit skilled workers for the jobs that they need. Individual graduates are at risk of being trained in fields that they actually can’t find work in so they may find themselves underemployed or over-employed. Local economic growth is likely to be stymied as a result of these inefficiencies. Not to mention the fact that alignment, by itself, doesn’t guarantee the expanding of economic opportunity.

In many cases, much of that credential underproduction is also leading to underproduction in programs that provide pathways to quite high-paying jobs for middle-skills workers.

NerdWallet: Did you see trends in any specific middle-skills jobs that aren’t being met across job markets?

Zack Mabel: We know, for example, that middle-skills credentials that are aligned with blue collar jobs tend to be underproduced. So nationally, we expect that about 23% of job openings available to middle-skills workers over the next several years will be blue collar.

Middle-skills providers collectively are producing only 12% of their credentials in those fields. We know that there are some dramatic shortages in many of the programs that are training people for these workers.

NerdWallet: On the flip side, are there certificates and degrees from middle-skills jobs that are overly conferred?

Zack Mabel: We see that many students are sort of drawn to enter business programs — even for folks who are in certificate and associate degree programs. As a result, among middle-skills providers, 13% of their credentials are being awarded in management and professional programs. Whereas, less than 10% of the jobs available to middle-skills workers over the next several years are in those occupations. So there’s a sort of overall credential overproduction there as well.

One of the major contributors that we see to the overall levels of misalignment is actually programs that are awarded in general studies programs. These programs, oftentimes, are designed specifically with the intention of helping students to transfer to bachelor’s degree programs. But due to well-known challenges with transferring from two- to four-year schools, fewer than half of the students who graduate from those types of general studies programs successfully transfer to bachelor’s degree programs within six years.

NerdWallet: So what happens to those general studies students who plan to transfer, but don’t?

Zack Mabel: Those programs don’t have a direct, occupational path in the workforce, but the reality is that many of the graduates coming out of those programs are, in fact, finding themselves looking for work in local economies with those credentials. And so that’s a major driver of the overall misalignment that we see.

It’s a major challenge for the graduates with those credentials, because oftentimes employers don’t recognize those individuals as necessarily having the skills to be able to secure the work that they’re looking to hire for.

We also know that if you look at the earnings returns for workers with middle-skills credentials with these general studies programs, their earnings are quite low — especially early in their career.

NerdWallet: In terms of location, where does misalignment tend to proliferate?

Zack Mabel: We tend to see quite a lot of variation in alignment across labor markets even if we look at very large major metro areas. We also see quite a bit of variation across predominantly rural labor markets.

We do, however, tend to see that there is an urban-rural divide where urban areas tend to exhibit stronger alignment than rural areas. One of the major explanations for that is the fact that urban areas tend to have a lot more providers serving the area.

NerdWallet: Can you speak more to how some providers intentionally design programs by collaborating with local employers?

Zack Mabel: That’s the sort of best practice and we need to see a lot more of it. Right now, what we tend to see is that these institutional-employer partnerships, oftentimes, are one-off. So there’s a single institution that’s partnering with a single player and they’re focused on providing “externship” opportunities for students in one particular program.

What we and others in the field really think we need to move towards is finding ways to engage multiple institutions and multiple employers in sector-wide collaborations. So really, this is a question of scale and coordination across multiple entities in a local area to address the needs of providers and to ensure that graduates coming out of those programs both have the skills and competencies that local employers are asking for.

NerdWallet: How common or uncommon is it for students to stay within their local labor markets after they achieve that degree or certificate?

Zack Mabel: It’s certainly not always the case, but nationally, about 85% of middle-skills graduates will be working within their state within the first year. We also know that many middle-skilled students are attending institutions within 10 miles of their home. And so we, unfortunately, need a lot better data when it comes to what the post-college movement patterns of graduates are. That’s true across the board, both for middle-skills graduates as well as graduates from bachelor’s degree programs.

We know that middle-skills graduates are much more likely to be working in their local economy than the graduates of many bachelor’s degree programs. There’s a lot more uncertainty when it comes to where bachelor’s degrees are headed after they earn their degree, but we know that there’s a lot more movement there.

NerdWallet: Some states have free tuition programs specifically to fill areas of skills gaps. Basically, the state will pay for a students’ tuition if they’re studying in a certain high-need field, and in exchange, students are then required to work for a certain amount of time in that local area. Is there a need for more of those policies?

Zack Mabel: I think it could be one of many strategies. These place-based policies are a more straightforward win for the local economies and local employers and probably more uncertain for individuals themselves. And the reason I say that is because if you’re a student who is incentivized by one of these programs to enter a particular program, you graduate and now you have an obligation to stay in the local area.

Let’s say it’s a rural area — that means that you’re earning less and your purchasing power is lower than if you had moved to a different labor market where your earnings are higher and your earnings relative to your cost of living is higher.

NerdWallet: Can you speak to some of the racial and ethnic disparities in training and outcomes that the report explores?

Zack Mabel: We know that opportunity is often so closely tied to where you live, where you learn — it’s the geography of opportunity.

We find that just having access to a middle-skills provider in your local economy differs by race and ethnicity. In particular, American Indian and Alaska Native individuals are anywhere from three to 18 times more likely than individuals of other racial and ethnic groups to live in an area that’s not served by middle-skills providers.

Then, if we look among working adults who do have access to a local middle-skills provider, we actually see that Latino and Hispanic adults are the least likely to live in labor markets that are strongly aligned.

NerdWallet: What does moving toward greater alignment actually look like? And what are some of the challenges that lay ahead?

Zack Mabel: Funding is a real challenge for middle-skills providers. Public community colleges receive very little funding per student compared to four-year institutions. Their missions are much more multifaceted and complicated than any other types of institutions. We need to be sort of clear-eyed about what it will take in terms of providing these institutions with the resources for them to achieve outcomes that look different than they do today.

Oftentimes we build accountability measures that are trying to incentivize institutions to do things differently, but we don’t actually provide the resources that are necessary to enable them to do things differently.

NerdWallet: What are some of the limitations of achieving alignment for the individual in terms of opportunity and financial security for workers? The report mentioned that alignment, even if it is important, is definitely not a cure-all.

Zack Mabel: Absolutely not. Alignment is in no way an assurance of securing economic mobility, high earnings or any of these sort of outcomes that we hope to cultivate for individuals.

Alignment provides a snapshot of how well supply and demand are coming together. In many cases, we see that skilled providers are producing enough credentials in programs that are aligned with particularly low-paying occupations, including personal services.

Where I think alignment can be particularly helpful is as a tool to understand where there is an under-production of credentials in programs that are particularly valuable and have really strong pathways to high-paying occupations. Because that’s really where there is low-hanging fruit — untapped potential economic opportunity — that is being lost.

If we can find a way to expand credential production in those programs and help get more students into those programs, that provides the best chances that both employer needs are being met and individuals are going to come out of those programs ahead of where they started.

Anna Helhoski writes for NerdWallet. Email: anna@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @AnnaHelhoski.

The article Half of Local U.S. Labor Markets Won’t Meet Future Workforce Needs originally appeared on NerdWallet.

By JENNIFER PELTZ and JON GAMBRELL

NEW YORK (AP) — Victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel sued Iran, Syria and North Korea on Monday, saying their governments supplied the terrorist group with money, weapons and know-how needed to carry out the assault that precipitated Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, seeks at least $4 billion in damages for “a coordination of extrajudicial killings, hostage takings, and related horrors for which the defendants provided material support and resources.”

Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to comment on the allegations, while Syria and North Korea did not respond.

The United States has deemed Iran, Syria and North Korea to be state sponsors of terrorism, and Washington has designated Hamas as what’s known as a specially designated global terrorist.

Because such countries rarely abide by court rulings against them in the United States, if the lawsuit’s plaintiffs are successful, they could seek compensation from a fund created by Congress that allows American victims of terrorism to receive payouts. The money comes from seized assets, fines or other penalties leveled against those that, for example, do business with a state sponsor of terrorism.

The lawsuit draws on previous court findings, reports from U.S. and other government agencies, and statements over some years by Hamas, Iranian and Syrian officials about their ties. The complaint also points to indications that Hamas fighters used North Korean weapons in the Oct. 7 attack.

But the suit doesn’t provide specific evidence that Tehran, Damascus or Pyongyang knew in advance about the assault. It accuses the three countries of providing weapons, technology and financial support necessary for the attack to occur.

Iran has denied knowing about the Oct. 7 attack ahead of time, though officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have praised the assault.

Iran has armed Hamas as a counter to Israel, which the Islamic Republic has long viewed as its regional archenemy.

In the years since the collapse of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran and Israel have been locked in a shadow war of attacks on land and at sea. Those attacks exploded into the open after an apparent Israeli attack targeting Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, during the Israel-Hamas war, which sparked Tehran’s unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel in April.

Neighboring Syria has relied on Iranian support to keep embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in power amid a grinding civil war that began with the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Like Iran, Syria also offered public support for Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack.

North Korea denies that it arms Hamas. However, video and weapons seized by Israel show Hamas fighters likely fired North Korean weapons during the Oct. 7 attack

South Korean officials, two experts on North Korean arms and an Associated Press analysis of weapons captured on the battlefield by Israel point toward Hamas using Pyongyang’s F-7 rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-fired weapon that fighters typically use against armored vehicles.

The lawsuit specifically cites the use of the F-7 grenade in the attack as a sign of Pyongyang’s involvement.

“Through this case, we will be able to prove what occurred, who the victims were, who the perpetrators were — and it will not just create a record in real time, but for all of history,” said one of the attorneys, James Pasch of the ADL, also called the Anti-Defamation League. The Jewish advocacy group frequently speaks out against antisemitism and extremism.

Hamas terrorists killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 during the Oct. 7 attack. Israel invaded Gaza in response. The war has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It doesn’t say how many were civilians or fighters.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of over 125 plaintiffs, including the estates and relatives of people who were killed, plus people who were physically and/or emotionally injured. All are related to, or are themselves, U.S. citizens.

Under U.S. law, foreign governments can be held liable, in some circumstances, for deaths or injuries caused by acts of terrorism or by providing material support or resources for them.

The 1976 statute cited in the lawsuit, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, is a frequent tool for American plaintiffs seeking to hold foreign governments accountable. In one example, a federal judge in Washington ordered North Korea in 2018 to pay $500 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died shortly after being released from that country.

People held as prisoners by Iran in the past have successfully sued Iran in U.S. federal court, seeking money earlier frozen by the U.S.

The new lawsuit joins a growing list of Israel-Hamas war-related cases in U.S. courts.

Last week, for example, Israelis who were taken hostage or lost loved ones during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack sued the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, claiming it has helped finance the group by paying agency staffers in U.S. dollars and thereby funneling them to money-changers in Gaza who allegedly give a cut to Hamas.

The agency, known as UNRWA, has denied that it knowingly aids Hamas or other militant groups.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. AP writers Courtney Bonnell and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed.

A Target Center folk hero will continue to don a Timberwolves jersey.

Luka Garza agreed to a two-year, minimum deal with Minnesota, a source confirmed Monday. The University of Iowa alum will make north of $2.1 million next season after previously playing two seasons on two-way deals for Minnesota.

Garza appeared in 25 games for the Timberwolves during the 2023-24 season. He’s an emergency big man on the current roster behind the likes of Rudy Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns and Naz Reid. But the 25-year-old is beloved in the organization for his professionalism and readiness.

That was on full display in a mid-March game against the Denver Nuggets when a slew of injuries left the Wolves with just Garza and Kyle Anderson as big man options. Garza compiled 11 points and six rebounds that game, all while battling NBA MVP Nikola Jokic defensively in the trenches for 22 minutes of Minnesota’s 3-point defeat.

“Luka, he’s always been ready from Day 1. He practices like he’s gonna play in the game, every day he prepares. He’s another guy, an energy guy, that we need,” Wolves guard Mike Conley said after that Denver game. “Who knows when he’s gonna play, but when he does, you know what you’re gonna get from him. He lifts everybody’s energy up as a group.”

That instills confidence that Garza can be an apt option should the Wolves lose anyone to injury next season, and provides optionality should opportunities to shuffle the roster arise mid-season.

Garza is a natural scorer who continues to make strides athletically, which has only aided in his defensive growth. His energy on the court, as well as his collegiate proximity to the Twin Cities, have made Garza a fan favorite. The home crowd erupts when he enters games and makes an impact.

At least for the foreseeable future, there will be more opportunities to cheer.

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FARGO, N.D. — Pamela Leath says she is an avid watcher of Fox New and loves “Fox & Friends,” the national news channel’s morning show.

So it isn’t a surprise that the West Fargo woman was the first person in line at 3 a.m. Monday, July 1, outside Randy’s Diner Too, waiting for a seat in the West Fargo restaurant and her chance to see “Fox & Friends” air live inside the eatery.

“I think it is a wonderful opportunity to show off our community and how family oriented we are,” she said of “Fox & Friends” coming to West Fargo.

Leath and dozens of others waited patiently in line before Randy’s opened its doors shortly before 5 a.m. Monday. When the restaurant was packed, the customers cheered as “Fox & Friends” co-anchor Brian Kilmeade greeted America. His co-hosts appeared from New York.

Kilmeade broadcast from West Fargo because North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is on a “short, short, short list,” as Kilmeade put it, of finalists who could become former President Donald Trump’s running mate. Trump, who appears frequently on “Fox & Friends,” has made glowing remarks about Burgum to Kilmeade, the co-anchor told The Forum newspaper on Monday.

“I think Trump loves the fact that they’re kind of in the same mindset,” Kilmeade said when asked about Burgum’s potential to be Trump’s vice president. “We did our thing in business. Now it’s time to help the country.”

Burgum walked into Randy’s shortly before 6 a.m. Monday, shaking hands, greeting and hugging patrons as he went through the restaurant. He then sat down with Kilmeade for a live interview, possibly with more than a million people watching on their televisions across the country.

“We were thrilled to welcome ‘Fox & Friends’ to North Dakota and share with them the best of America,” Burgum said in a statement to The Forum. “First Lady Kathryn and I were grateful for all the support from North Dakotans this morning.”

The Fox News morning show’s visit to West Fargo — it was its first to North Dakota — is part of a “Breakfast With Friends” series during which “Fox & Friends” will interview reported Trump running mate finalists in their home states. Trump has said little about who the finalists are, though media reports suggest Burgum, along with U.S. Sens. J.D. Vance, of Ohio, and Marco Rubio, of Florida, are the top picks to be the presumed Republican presidential nominee’s right-hand man.

Trump has said he will announce his running mate around the time of the Republican National Convention, which runs July 15-18 in Milwaukee.

Burgum has served as North Dakota’s governor since 2016. His office suggested Randy’s as a location for the “Fox & Friends” interview.

Randy’s owner Heidi Roggenkamp said her staff served roughly 300 people during the three-hour show.

“I think it just shows that people were excited to draw some attention to our community,” she said. “When they have a show that’s called ‘Breakfast with Friends,’ that’s literally what we do every single day.”

People complimented the food and service, and the crowd was positive and respectful, Roggenkamp said. She said she was excited to show customers how hard her staff works.

“To me, that was the biggest thing,” she said of her staff. “I was so excited for them.”

‘He will do it’
Burgum ran for president but ended his campaign in December amid low polling numbers.

In January, Burgum decided not to seek a third term as the state’s leader. Since then, he has spent a significant amount of time campaigning for Trump, raising speculation that he could be the former president’s running mate.

Trump also has teased an announcement about Burgum, possibly as part of his cabinet.

Burgum has been critical of Trump in the past, though more so of President Joe Biden. The Democrat defeated Trump in 2020 and will face Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

Biden is harmful for North Dakota and the U.S., Burgum has said, adding Trump has the best chance to beat the Democrat.

Kilmeade interviewed Burgum and his wife, Kathryn, at their ranch near Fargo. The governor said he would do business with Trump now that he’s gotten to know him.

“He’s focused and cares deeply for this country,” Burgum said of Trump during the interview.

When asked if he wants to be vice president, Burgum said he wants to be in the spot where he and his wife can make the most impact.

Before becoming governor, Burgum created Great Plains Software before selling it to Microsoft in 2001. He also founded the Kilbourne Group, a real estate development firm, and co-founded Arthur Ventures, which invests in software companies.

Burgum used his experience as a successful businessman to serve as governor, Kilmeade told The Forum. Burgum can help Trump get the presidency and help him lead the country, Kilmeade said.

“All he does his entire life is execute,” Kilmeade said of Burgum. “If you give Doug Burgum a job, his whole career indicates he will do it and do it well.”

North Dakota native and actor Josh Duhamel and U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., also appeared at Randy’s.

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