New Report by KEITH WARDRIP, FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF PHILADELPHIA, STUART ANDREASON, FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ATLANTA, AND MELS DE ZEEUW, FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ATLANTA*

Research has shown that the level of education requested in online job advertisements varies across metro areas, even for the same occupation. In this paper, we focus on four middle-skills occupations and investigate whether the observed variation can be fully explained by the characteristics of the jobs themselves. Even after controlling for the characteristics of the online job advertisements, we find that that employers’ preferences for a bachelor’s degree are higher where recent college graduates are relatively more numerous, where wages are higher, in larger metro areas, and in the Northeast.