More high-school graduates are being diverted from college campuses by brighter prospects for blue-collar jobs in a historically strong labor market for less-educated workers.
The college enrollment rate for recent U.S. high-school graduates, ages 16 to 24, declined to 62% last year from 66.2% in 2019, just before the pandemic began, according to the latest Labor Department data. The rate topped out at 70.1% in 2009.
Job growth at restaurants, theme parks and other parts of the leisure and hospitality sector—which tend to employ young people and typically don’t require a college degree—has increased more than twice as fast as job gains overall in the past year. There also remains a high number of job openings in construction, manufacturing and warehousing, fields that often require additional training, but not college degrees.
The unemployment rate for teenage workers ages 16 to 19 fell to a 70-year low of 9.2% last month, fueling larger pay increases.