Half of civilian workers required over 1 year of preparation time to perform their jobs in 2022

In 2022, 53.7 percent of civilian workers required specific vocational preparation time over 1 year. This preparation comes in the form of formal education, credentials, prior work experience, and on-the-job training needed to perform the job.

Minimum formal education is one component of specific vocational preparation. In some occupations, it makes up much of the preparation time. A bachelor’s degree was required for more than half of business and financial operations workers and educational and instruction and library workers.

For construction and extraction workers, however, 49.0 percent had no degree requirement, and 47.2 percent required a high school diploma. Instead, these workers obtain much of their preparation through credentials, such as apprenticeship programs, prior work experience, or on-the-job training.

These data are from the Occupational Requirements Survey. To learn more, see “Occupational Requirements in the United States — 2022.” Specific vocational preparation captures the minimum amount of time needed to develop skills for the job. Preparation time is divided into nine levels, ranging from as little as 4 hours to more than 10 years. Levels 6 through 9 indicate that over 1 year of preparation was needed. For more information on concepts and definitions in the survey, see the Handbook of Methods and the minimum formal education factsheet.