The Alignment Gap: Why Regional Talent Pipelines Break, and How to Fix Them
Regional workforce challenges are often described as shortages of workers, skills, credentials, or training capacity. Those descriptions are accurate, but incomplete.
The deeper issue is alignment.
Across the country, education and workforce systems are working toward related goals but do not always plan from the same labor-market picture. Economic development organizations may be focused on business attraction and expansion. Workforce development boards may be responding to employer needs and participant barriers. Community colleges may be managing program capacity, completion goals, and institutional priorities. Four-year institutions may be developing academic programs with broader regional or statewide objectives.
Each role is important. The challenge is that these efforts do not always connect.
When systems operate separately, credentials may not map to local occupations, work-based learning may remain peripheral to the educational experience, and public resources may be distributed without a shared framework for measuring results. This is not a college problem or a workforce board problem. It is a system problem.
Better-connected systems can turn education and training into economic opportunity for individuals while helping regional employers build the talent they need.
The Data Shows a Regional Alignment Gap
The evidence points to a clear need for stronger education to workforce alignment.
In The Great Misalignment, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce examined 565 U.S. labor markets with at least one provider of middle-skills credentials, including certificates and associate’s degrees.
The report found that in half of those labor markets, at least 50 percent of certificates and associate’s degrees would need to be conferred in different fields of study to meet projected labor demand through 2031.
That is not a marginal adjustment. It is a signal that many regions are producing credentials in fields that do not correspond closely enough with the occupations their economies are expected to need.
The same report found that 28 percent of all middle-skills credentials awarded nationwide have no direct occupational match. More than 90 percent of those credentials are granted in liberal arts, general studies, and humanities.
These fields can provide valuable knowledge and transferable skills. The concern is not that every credential must prepare a learner for one narrowly defined job. The concern is whether institutions, employers, workforce leaders, and learners have a clear understanding of how programs connect to opportunity in a particular region.
The challenge is also more pronounced in rural labor markets, where misalignment is typically higher. One reason is structural: rural areas often have fewer providers and therefore fewer opportunities for program specialization.
The Georgetown research also points to a constructive opportunity. Labor markets served by more providers tend to have lower levels of credentials-to-jobs misalignment because providers are more likely to specialize in complementary rather than competing programs.
Coordination matters. When institutions understand their distinct roles within a regional ecosystem, the overall system can become more responsive without requiring every provider to offer every program.
Credential Shortages Affect Regional Economic Growth
The alignment gap is not limited to whether programs exist. It also affects whether regions can produce enough credentials for occupations that offer strong economic opportunity.
Georgetown CEW’s Missed Opportunities examines credential shortages in programs aligned with high-paying middle-skills jobs across the 55 largest U.S. metropolitan areas.
The report projects that 52 of the 55 largest metro areas will face shortages of credentials aligned with high-paying middle-skills occupations. If current production levels do not change, aligned credential supply will meet only 13 percent of projected annual demand through 2032.
Blue-collar occupations account for the greatest share of these shortages.
This finding reinforces an important distinction: the problem is not simply that employers need more workers or that institutions need to produce more graduates. The issue is whether regional education and training capacity is connected to the occupations, industries, and skill requirements that shape local economic development.
A region may invest in recruitment, infrastructure, and business growth, but those investments will be limited if the talent pipeline is not aligned with the resulting demand. Similarly, an institution may expand credentials without a shared understanding of whether those credentials connect learners to sustainable employment.
Regional workforce development requires both perspectives at the same time.
Work-Based Learning Must Be Part of the Pathway
Credentials become more valuable when learners can connect classroom learning to real work, professional expectations, and employer-defined skills.
The Strada Education Foundation’s Work-Based Learning: Who Gets Paid? examines paid work-based learning using the 2025 State Opportunity Index and surveys of more than 56,000 students at public two- and four-year institutions.
The report found that nationally, only 43 percent of students at public four-year institutions report at least one of five types of paid work-based learning: internships, apprenticeships, co-ops, practica, or undergraduate research. Participation at public two-year institutions is even lower.
Access is also uneven. First-generation students and women are less likely to have a paid work-based learning experience, and quality coaching is associated with higher participation.
These findings matter for both workforce readiness and equity. Unpaid experiences can be difficult for learners who must balance education with employment, family responsibilities, transportation costs, or other obligations. If paid, supported work-based learning is not integrated into pathways, the students most likely to benefit may be least able to participate.
Regional partners can respond by identifying fields with fewer paid opportunities, improving participation data, directing resources to less-resourced institutions, and treating coaching as part of pathway design rather than an optional addition.
Work-based learning should not sit at the edge of the education-to-workforce system. It should help connect curriculum, credential attainment, employer expectations, and career progression.
Degree Apprenticeships Connect Learning and Earning
Degree apprenticeship models offer another way to integrate education, work, and credentials.
New America’s Mapping the Landscape of Degree Apprenticeship: Expanding a Promising Model for Mobility identified 579 degree apprenticeship opportunities at 346 institutions of higher education in 49 states and the District of Columbia. These opportunities cover 91 occupations.
The report also found that degree apprenticeships remain heavily concentrated. More than three-quarters are located in five occupational groups, and nearly one-third are in Educational Instruction and Library Occupations. Most opportunities are associate degrees, chiefly Associate of Applied Science degrees.
The opportunity is significant, but expansion requires more than creating isolated programs. Institutions, employers, workforce boards, and economic development organizations must determine where degree apprenticeship models respond to actual regional demand and how they fit within existing pathways.
That work includes clarifying employer roles, aligning academic and occupational requirements, supporting learners, coordinating funding, and creating structures that can be sustained after initial grant support ends.
A Shared Regional Labor-Market Picture
The practical starting point is shared information.
Economic development organizations, workforce development boards, community colleges, four-year institutions, employers, social service agencies, and public leaders need a common understanding of:
- Priority industries and occupations
- Current and projected regional demand
- Existing credentials and their occupational connections
- Program capacity, completion, and participation
- Work-based learning access and quality
- Barriers affecting learner entry, persistence, and employment
- Resources available to support pathway development
This shared picture should inform coordinated program planning. It should also be revisited regularly as industries, technologies, demographics, and employer needs change.
No single institution can solve the alignment gap alone. Regional alignment requires complementary roles, shared objectives, and a willingness to coordinate rather than duplicate efforts.
From Shared Information to Shared Accountability
Data is only useful when it guides action.
A coordinated regional strategy should connect labor-market information to program decisions, employer engagement, pathway design, and resource development. It should also establish shared measures of progress.
Those measures may include the relationship between credentials and occupations, participation in paid work-based learning, employer engagement, learner progression, completion, employment, and the ability of individuals to advance toward economic opportunity.
Braided funding can support this work by aligning institutional resources, workforce investments, economic development funds, employer contributions, public programs, and philanthropic support around shared priorities. The objective is not simply to combine funding sources. It is to connect resources to a coherent strategy that partners can implement and sustain.
Accountability should be shared as well. Institutions should not be expected to carry responsibility for employer demand alone. Workforce boards should not be expected to address program design without institutional partnership. Economic development organizations should not be expected to build talent pipelines without coordination with education and workforce leaders.
The work belongs to the system.
How Morse Strategies Supports Regional Alignment
Morse Strategies, LLC partners with institutions and organizations to connect education, social service, workforce, and economic development systems around shared goals.
Our work supports:
- Strategic planning that connects institutional priorities with regional workforce and economic development objectives
- Partnership development among colleges, universities, employers, workforce boards, government, and community stakeholders
- Sustainable resource mapping and development to align funding and capacity with short- and long-term goals
- Education-to-workforce ecosystem alignment that strengthens pathways into degrees, credentials, and careers
- Government relations and lobbying related to workforce development and economic development priorities
We bring data-driven insight together with practical implementation. That means helping partners understand the alignment gap, convene the right stakeholders, establish a shared direction, and sustain the work over time.
Better alignment is not achieved through a single program or one-time planning process. It requires ongoing coordination, institutional commitment, and measurable progress.
The opportunity is substantial: when systems connect more effectively, learners gain clearer pathways to economic opportunity, institutions strengthen their relevance and effectiveness, and regional employers gain access to a more prepared talent base.
The work starts with a shared understanding of the challenge and a practical plan for moving forward. Visit Morse Strategies to learn how we can support your regional workforce development, education to workforce alignment, or strategic planning efforts. You can also learn more about our approach or contact our team.