How employers are making it harder to get jobs

(Image credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

published 25 October 2017

There might be a reason you keep getting rejected from that dream job — and it's not because you're underqualified.

A new study from Harvard Business School shows that employers are raising the bar for new hires, asking for better academic qualifications than the person who currently holds the job.

For example, 67 percent of job postings for production supervisors in 2015 required a college degree — but only 16 percent of those who already had the job actually had a degree. That means qualified workers are losing out on jobs and perhaps higher wages, while manufacturers are losing out on those workers at a time when they can't find employees to begin with, the Federal Reserve notes.

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This study comes at a time when there are 6.1 million job openings in America, nearly a record high. It revealed that 6.2 million jobs had hiked up their education requirements.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.