Chart of the week: D.C. graduates face workforce, skills-based challenges

While Washington, D.C. ranks among the wealthiest and most educated cities in the United States,¹ not all residents experience those advantages equally. Of every 100 students who enter ninth grade, only an estimated 18 will complete a postsecondary degree within six years of graduating high school.² Young adults born and living in D.C. earn $34,000 a year on average — less than half the $71,000 earned by peers who moved here later. The gap is not just about credentials. It’s also about skills, or the extent to which young people are developing the capabilities that employers in high-opportunity fields seek.

To explore this issue, the D.C. Policy Center team examined skills required by occupations that are common among D.C.’s likely alumni, currently held by D.C.’s young adults aged 18 to 34 years old who were born in D.C.  Using five overlapping 5-year waves of the American Community Survey (ACS) spanning 2016-2024, we identified the 20 most common occupations held by each group. Next, for each occupation, skill requirements were drawn from Occupational Information Network(O*NET,)³ and included skills with importance level 3 or higher.⁴

The second part of the analysis focuses on opportunities that lead to economic mobility in the region. Using D.C.’s Department of Employment Services’ (DOES) Hot Jobs lists — which are based on hiring demand, projected job growth, and median wages — we mapped the skills required for three categories of occupations in D.C.:

• Top 50 Hot Jobs, representing high-demand occupations across education levels;
• Top 50 Hot Jobs for High School Graduates, focused on jobs accessible without a bachelor’s degree; and
• Top 20 Gateway Jobs, which can serve as entry points into stronger career pathways and do not always require high school graduation.⁵

Occupations from these three lists range from food service managers and security supervisors at the entry level, to paralegals, computer support specialists, and licensed practical nurses at the intermediate level, to compliance officers, human resources managers, registered nurses, and computer network architects in more advanced roles.

Comparing current occupational skills with the skills required for higher-opportunity jobs paints a more encouraging picture than earnings data alone might suggest. Thirteen skills appear consistently across both the jobs D.C. alumni currently hold and the jobs linked to stronger economic opportunity: active listening, speaking, critical thinking, reading comprehension, monitoring, coordination, time management, social perceptiveness, judgment and decision-making, service orientation, active learning, complex problem solving, and writing.

These are not narrow technical abilities. They are foundational, transferable skills that apply across industries and career levels. The fact that many of D.C.’s young adults who were born here are already using these skills in their current jobs is significant. It suggests that the path to higher-opportunity employment is not starting from zero.

At the same time, important gaps remain. Six skills commonly required for Gateway Jobs and Hot Jobs are largely absent from the current occupational profiles of young adults who were born here: persuasion, systems analysis, learning strategies, negotiation, systems evaluation, and instructing. These are higher-order skills involving the ability to understand complex systems, teach or guide others, negotiate outcomes, and direct one’s own learning. They are also less likely to develop naturally in entry-level service jobs, where work is often routine, and interactions are more transactional.

Among young adults with bachelor’s degrees, the largest gaps appear in skills such as management of personnel resources, systems evaluation, and mathematics.

These findings are the first phase of the analysis. The next phase of the work will examine skill levels — not just whether a skill is present, but how intensively it is used — to better understand where the distance between current and target occupations is greatest. Future work will also explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping demand for specific skills across the labor market. In addition, qualitative research will hear directly from young adults about the skills they found most important when starting their careers, and with employers about the capabilities they seek in early-career hires and where they most often see gaps.

1. Forbes Advisor, “The 100 Most Educated Cities in the U.S.,” accessed June 2, 2026, https://www.forbes.com/advisor/education/most-educated-cities/
2. Coffin, C. (2024, October 24). Strengthening work-based learning is necessary to improve early career outcomes. D.C. Policy Center. https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/strengthening-work-based-learning-is-necessary-to-improve-early-career-outcomes/
3. National Center for ONET Development, “ONET Resource Center,” O*NET Resource Center, https://www.onetcenter.org/
4. This decision was adopted from the Pew Research Center’s methodology on identifying important skills with respect to AI in the workforce. While our research is slightly different, we apply this approach to identify the most common skills in the current workforce. Rakesh Kochhar, “Methodology for O*NET Analysis,” Pew Research Center, July 26, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/07/26/2023-ai-and-jobs-methodology-for-onet-analysis/
5. GED stands for General Educational Development. It is a series of four subject tests that, when passed, certify that a test-taker has academic knowledge equivalent to a traditional U.S. high school diploma. The credential allows individuals who did not finish high school to pursue higher education, enter the military, and qualify for jobs that require a high school credential.