If the new Hudson Institute report is correct, 65-75 percent of the new jobs in the fastest growing occupations in the U.S.will require language and mathematics skills at or below the 8th grade level in school. So how many adults have such skills? While we do not have any data for mathematics in the U.S., the Young Adult Literacy Survey of 1985 report indicated that as far as reading is concerned, the reading skills of 80 percent of young adults in 1985 surpassed the skills of the average 8th grade student. Indeed, 60 percent of young adults performed better than the average 11th grader. If the same findings held for mathematics, and the schools continue to graduate students into adulthood with the same levels of skills as the 1985 young adults, then as we enter the next century the U.S. may well be in the position as a nation of having a "literacy surplus" in which the overall skills of the workforce exceed the overall demands of workplaces.

In Canada a new program of research adds additional support to the hypothesis of a growing "literacy surplus." Krahn & Lowe (1999) devised a method of comparing the literacy skills of Canadians on the International Adult Literacy Survey with their reported use of literacy on their jobs. They report QUOTE" (1) 20 percent of Canadians are employed in jobs that do not take advantage of their literacy skills, (2) A greater proportion of Canadian workers fall under the literacy surplus category than fall under the literacy deficit category." UNQUOTE

Now comes two new lines of evidence in the U.S.that seem to lend some measure of support to the literacy "surplus" possibility. In the Thursday Notes for March 16,2000, an electronic newsletter attributed as From the Desk of Ron Pugsley, Director of the U. S. Department of Education's Division of Adult Education and Literacy, an important announcement was made based on a new report (Barton, (2000). Citing this new study, the Thursday Note says, QUOTE "Jobs requiring an associate's degree or higher account for just 16% of actual job openings, . Meanwhile, nearly one third of 25-29 year-olds attain bachelor's or associate's degrees and will compete for those jobs." UNQUOTE This suggests a "surplus" of post-secondary educated adults over the requirements for this much education.

The new report by Paul Barton, long time education and work policy analyst, provides the most sophisticated analysis yet of literacy requirements of jobs based on the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) and new data from the U. S. Department of Labor. The report summarizes some very extensive analyses and, in a section called "The Bottom Line" states several conclusions regarding literacy, education requirements and jobs during the period 1986 through 2006. The asterisked items are taken from that summary:

*Those occupations with the highest literacy requirements and those with the lowest are both growing at rates well above the average, resulting in little net effect on overall literacy requirements.