TL;DR. Skills-based hiring is real for some employers and occupations, not for the labour market as a whole. The clearest change is in government. Maryland went first in March 2022, and by November 2024, 25 states had committed by executive order or law to remove unnecessary degree requirements from state jobs (NBER Working Paper 33220). The ads changed: in Virginia the share of state postings with no degree requirement rose from 58 percent in 2019 to 90 percent in 2024, and across committed states degree requirements fell about 2.5 to 3.1 points per year of policy. The Chance to Compete Act, signed on 23 December 2024, requires job-specific technical assessments for competitive-service hiring within three years. But in fiscal 2025, 91.23 percent of federal delegated-examining announcements still rated applicants only with self-report questionnaires (OPM, December 2025). In the private market, 9 of the 12 large degree-reset occupations we checked are jobs where the Bureau of Labor Statistics already lists a high school diploma or associate degree as typical entry. The CEO move: treat your next role as a market-entry decision and aim where the screen has actually dropped, not where a press release says it has. The student move: build the evidence these employers now test, which is structured interviews, job knowledge tests and work samples, not more certificates.
Yesterday’s piece, Certificates vs. Portfolios vs. Degrees: What Actually Signals Skill in 2026, looked at the job seeker’s signals and found that firm-level degree removals changed very few actual hires. This piece looks at the other side of the table: which employers and which occupations removed the degree line, how they now assess people instead, and how to use that map. If you are early in your career, read it alongside the entry-level squeeze.
Is skills-based hiring real, or still mostly a promise?
It helps to separate three layers that headlines blur: the policy (an employer announces degrees are no longer required), the posting (the ad stops listing a degree) and the assessment and hire (a test or structured interview replaces the degree, and people without degrees are hired). Policy has moved fast, postings have moved unevenly, and hiring has moved least. A claim about the first two layers tells you where a door may be open; only the third tells you who walks through it.
Where did governments remove the degree screen?
State governments acted first and at scale. The National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Heck, Corcoran de Castillo, Blair and Debroy (December 2024) dates the start precisely: “In March 2022, Governor Hogan of Maryland signed an Administrative Order to eliminate bachelor’s degree requirements for thousands of state jobs.” Colorado followed a month later with Executive Order 2022-15, and Tennessee’s legislature barred state agencies from requiring a bachelor’s degree unless the skills could only reasonably be obtained through one. By November 2024, 25 states had passed legislation or executive orders, 13 led by Republican and 12 by Democratic governors. Three of the four authors work at Opportunity@Work, a nonprofit that campaigns for skills-based hiring, and the paper has not been peer reviewed, so read it as careful advocacy research.
The count has kept rising. Opportunity@Work said in June 2026 that “33 states and counting have committed to removing degree requirements from public jobs”, and in September 2026 that governors in 19 states had used executive orders. These are advocacy counts with no published list in the releases, so treat 33 as an upper estimate.
Did the job ads follow? For ten states with the clearest gains, the Institute for Responsive Government compiled the share of state job postings that did not require a degree, citing the National Governors Association’s 2025 report with Lightcast data.
| State | Year of main action | Postings with no degree requirement, 2019 | Same, 2024 | Change (points) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virginia | 2023 | 58% | 90% | +32 |
| Maryland | 2022 | 36% | 52% | +16 |
| Alaska | 2023 | 62% | 77% | +15 |
| Colorado | 2022 | 45% | 58% | +13 |
| Tennessee | 2022 | 27% | 39% | +12 |
| Idaho | 2024 | 65% | 76% | +11 |
| Utah | 2021 | 65% | 74% | +9 |
| South Dakota | 2023 | 55% | 64% | +9 |
| Massachusetts | 2024 | 26% | 34% | +8 |
| North Carolina | 2023 | 54% | 59% | +5 |
Source: Institute for Responsive Government, “Cutting Red Tape for States to Hire Top Talent: A Landscape Overview”, 26 June 2025, citing National Governors Association and Lightcast, Empowering Progress, February 2025. Point changes recomputed by CEOtudent and match the source.
The median gain across these ten states is 11.5 points, and starting points differ enormously: in 2024 Massachusetts still required a degree in about two thirds of state postings, Virginia in about one in ten. The NGA summary reports that 22 of 25 states with skills-based policies saw their no-degree share rise; for Maryland it gives 32 percent in 2022 and 47 percent in 2024, a different window from the table.
Georgia shows the work behind a headline. Its Department of Administrative Services reviewed 1,439 job titles after a 2023 state law. Before the review, 1,021 of 1,371 jobs (74.5 percent) required a degree or a degree and/or equivalent experience. Afterwards, 774 jobs (53.7 percent) had degree requirements removed or experience requirements reduced. The motive was practical: applications per state job opening had fallen from an average of 57 in fiscal 2019 to 20 in fiscal 2023. Pennsylvania, according to the NGA and Lightcast summary, removed four-year degree requirements from 92 percent of state government positions, about 65,000 jobs. According to the Institute for Responsive Government, 34 percent more candidates skilled through alternative routes applied to Maryland state jobs in the six months after its change.
Did the state policies change the job ads, or only the press releases?
The NBER paper is the most rigorous test so far. Using more than 2.4 million Lightcast state government job postings from January 2015 to October 2024, with controls for time trends, state and occupation, it finds that “degree requirements decline by 2.5 to 3.1 percentage points for each additional year of policy exposure”. Reweighting postings to match each state’s occupation mix gives larger effects of 4.67 to 5.1 points per year.
The change was broad but not universal. Among jobs posted in the 12 months after a state’s commitment, 48.1 percent were in occupations with a sizable fall in degree requirements, 38.5 percent in occupations where the share stayed roughly constant, and 13.4 percent in occupations where degree requirements rose. For middle- and higher-wage occupations that both groups of workers already held, the authors expected 63.3 percent of postings to be open to people without degrees and observed 67.6 percent, an additional 3,950 postings, or about 7 percent more.
Two cautions. The paper measures postings, not hires. And its text calls the 63.3 to 67.6 change “a 3.3 percentage point increase”, while the printed shares differ by 4.3 points, which is what the 3,950 postings and “7% more” figures imply. We report the printed shares.
What changed in federal hiring?
The federal story is less about removing degrees and more about replacing them with tests.
- Executive Order 13932 (26 June 2020) said that “an overreliance on college degrees excludes capable candidates” and limited minimum educational requirements in the competitive service to cases where education “is legally required to perform the duties of the position”.
- The Chance to Compete Act of 2024 (Public Law 118-188, approved 23 December 2024) goes further. Three years after enactment, examining agencies “shall use a technical assessment”, defined as a position-specific tool based on a job analysis that “does not solely include or principally rely upon a self-assessment”. Agencies can seek a waiver if a technical assessment is impracticable for a job series. The Act also orders the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to review which positions with minimum education requirements are actually justified by evidence.
- The Merit Hiring Plan (29 May 2025), issued by the White House Domestic Policy Council and OPM, put timelines on it. OPM directed that by 30 September 2025 self-evaluation questionnaires may no longer be used to rate and rank candidates, except for narrow categories such as jobs below GS-5, and that every hiring process must include at least one technical or alternative assessment.
The first official data show how far there is to go. OPM’s consolidated report to Congress (December 2025) gives fiscal 2025 figures for delegated-examining announcements, the route through which outside candidates compete for federal jobs.
| Federal hiring measure, FY 2025 | Value |
|---|---|
| Delegated-examining announcements relying solely on self-report questionnaires | 91.23% (41,386) |
| Announcements that added another assessment | 8.77% (3,977) |
| Announcements with no self-report questionnaire at all | 1.36% (619) |
| Selections made from self-report-only announcements | 92.5% (44,156) |
| Responding agencies using more than one assessment method | 68% |
| Agencies (of 117) with industrial-organisational psychologists dedicated to assessments | 15% |
| Job series covered by USA Hire standard assessments | 135 |
Source: U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Chance to Compete Act of 2024 Consolidated Report to Congress, December 2025, Part III. Figures as printed.
In other words, roughly 1 in 11 federal announcements used anything beyond a self-rating checklist in fiscal 2025, and the whole fiscal year predates the 30 September 2025 deadline for dropping self-ratings. The most common alternatives were structured interviews, job knowledge tests and work-simulation interviews. OPM’s plan is to update more than 300 occupational series by the end of fiscal 2026 and another 300-plus by the end of fiscal 2027. For a job seeker the implication is direct: in federal hiring, the bottleneck is moving from “do you have the degree?” to “can you pass the assessment?”, and the assessment capacity is still being built.
Which occupations dropped the degree line?
Government is one employer. For the wider market, the best occupation-level evidence is still the Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School study The Emerging Degree Reset (February 2022), built on more than 51 million job postings. It found that 46 percent of middle-skill and 31 percent of high-skill occupations had material degree resets between 2017 and 2019, and that 63 percent of changing occupations showed “structural” resets that began before the pandemic.
That study did not ask what the government’s own occupational data say about these jobs. We joined its largest structural-reset occupations to the BLS Employment Projections for 2025-35, which give each occupation’s typical entry education, median pay, projected growth and, in a supplemental table last updated in August 2026, a relative AI exposure category.
| Occupation (Burning Glass title) | Postings asking for BA+, 2017 | Same, 2020 | Change (points) | BLS typical entry education | Median wage, 2025 | Projected change, 2025-35 | BLS relative AI exposure |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Insurance sales agent | 61.5% | 36.3% | -25.2 | High school diploma | $62,280 | +3.3% | Very high |
| Real estate agent/broker | 43.4% | 25.6% | -17.7 | High school diploma | $52,830 | +1.7% | Very high |
| Loan officer | 58.9% | 43.5% | -15.4 | Bachelor’s degree | $76,690 | +1.1% | Very high |
| Personal financial advisor | 84.1% | 70.7% | -13.4 | Bachelor’s degree | $105,070 | +1.4% | Very high |
| Property/real estate/community manager | 49.6% | 37.2% | -12.4 | High school diploma | $69,990 | +3.7% | High |
| Paralegal/legal assistant | 65.1% | 54.0% | -11.1 | Associate’s degree | $62,890 | -0.3% | High |
| Maintenance/service supervisor | 33.1% | 25.0% | -8.2 | High school diploma | $79,860 | +4.1% | High |
| Claims specialist/adjuster/examiner | 61.5% | 53.5% | -8.0 | High school diploma | $78,000 | -5.5% | Very high |
| Preschool/childcare teacher | 25.4% | 18.2% | -7.2 | Associate’s degree | $38,140 | +4.5% | Moderate |
| Retail store manager/supervisor | 26.3% | 20.1% | -6.2 | High school diploma | $48,520 | -3.7% | High |
| Computer programmer | 82.9% | 78.8% | -4.2 | Bachelor’s degree | $100,390 | -7.3% | Very high |
| Human resources assistant | 33.0% | 29.7% | -3.3 | Associate’s degree | $50,610 | -6.2% | Very high |
CEOtudent analysis of Burning Glass Institute, The Emerging Degree Reset (2022), Table 1 and Appendix Table 1, joined to BLS Employment Projections 2025-35 (AI exposure categories table). Matching Burning Glass occupation titles to BLS occupations is a CEOtudent editorial mapping. Posting shares are from 2017 and 2020, before generative AI; BLS figures are 2025 and 2025-35.
Read across the rows and three patterns appear.
The reset mostly corrected degree inflation. In 9 of these 12 occupations, BLS says the typical entry route is a high school diploma or associate degree. Even after the reset, insurance sales postings asked for a bachelor’s degree 36 percent of the time in 2020, for a job BLS describes as high school entry. Where BLS entry education sits below the degree line in an ad, the degree is more likely a preference than a requirement.
The opened doors are not the fastest-growing ones. Across all 831 detailed occupations in the same BLS table, employment is projected to grow about 3.5 percent from 2025 to 2035 (CEOtudent calculation from the summed occupation rows). Only 3 of these 12 reset occupations beat that rate. Several are projected to shrink.
AI exposure is high where the doors opened. Eleven of the twelve carry a High or Very high relative AI exposure rating. BLS stresses that an exposure category “is not a forecast of employment growth or decline” and that its theoretical sources reflect AI capabilities “no later than mid-2023”, but it is still a different bet from a growing, less exposed role.
Where did state governments open higher-paid roles?
The state-government postings tell a different story. The NBER paper lists the occupations with the largest increases in the share of state postings open to workers without a bachelor’s degree in the 12 months after a state commitment. We joined seven of them to the same BLS table.
| State government occupation (NBER) | Share of postings open to non-graduates, before | After | Change (points) | BLS typical entry education | Median wage, 2025 | Projected change, 2025-35 | BLS relative AI exposure |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software developers | 47.2% | 76.5% | +29.3 | Bachelor’s degree | $135,980 | +10.2% | Very high |
| General and operations managers | 44.5% | 65.9% | +21.4 | Bachelor’s degree | $105,770 | +5.0% | High |
| Marketing, advertising and PR managers | 33.8% | 50.7% | +16.9 | Bachelor’s degree | $166,790 | +6.9% | Very high |
| Management analysts | 62.1% | 76.9% | +14.7 | Bachelor’s degree | $101,860 | +10.1% | Very high |
| Financial managers | 44.7% | 58.0% | +13.3 | Bachelor’s degree | $166,570 | +9.7% | Very high |
| Financial analysts | 37.7% | 50.7% | +13.1 | Bachelor’s degree | $102,740 | +7.2% | Very high |
| Computer scientists and systems analysts | 56.7% | 69.0% | +12.3 | Bachelor’s degree | $105,850 | +7.9% | Very high |
CEOtudent analysis of Heck, Corcoran de Castillo, Blair and Debroy, NBER Working Paper 33220 (2024), Table 3 (18 states that committed before November 2023; Lightcast postings 2021-2024), joined to BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Occupation matching is a CEOtudent editorial mapping; marketing managers and computer systems analysts are the closest BLS matches to broader NBER groups.
This is the more interesting door. Every one of these occupations has a bachelor’s degree as its BLS typical entry level, all seven are projected to grow faster than the all-occupation average, and the median wage in the group is $105,850. State governments opened roles that the national labour market still treats as graduate jobs. That makes public-sector experience a plausible bridge: a role a non-graduate can now enter in a committed state builds the record that later counts in the private market.
The caution is the same: these are postings, and six of the seven roles have Very high relative AI exposure.
What does the shift look like outside the United States?
The degree line is a much more American phenomenon than the debate suggests. Indeed Hiring Lab found that only about 14 percent of UK job postings explicitly mention any formal education requirement, against almost 50 percent in the United States. The share of UK postings that require a bachelor’s degree or higher had “remained steady at around 4.6%” for several years, while the US share fell from 20.4 percent in January 2019 to 17.8 percent in January 2024. Where UK requirements did fall, it was in technical fields: in mathematics, which includes data science, postings requiring at least a bachelor’s degree fell from 35.3 percent in the first half of 2018 to 28.3 percent in the first half of 2024.
LinkedIn’s Economic Graph Research Institute (company research, March 2025) models how much candidate pools would grow if employers screened on overlapping skills instead of prior job titles: a median 6.1 times globally, 15.9 times in the United States, 8.4 times in the United Kingdom and 21.6 times for US government administration jobs. These are modelled pools that ignore education, not hires.
The practical reading: in the UK the degree line is usually unwritten, so the hurdle is the unstated expectation; in the US it is written down, which also means it can be removed.
Is AI raising or lowering the degree screen?
The evidence points both ways, and it is too early to call.
AI skills still cluster in degree-level postings. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (Galeano, Hodge and Ruder, May 2025) found that in 2024, 4.7 percent of postings requiring a bachelor’s degree asked for at least one AI skill, against 1.4 percent of postings requiring an associate degree and 0.5 percent requiring a high school diploma or GED. Demand is growing fastest at sub-degree level in computer and mathematical occupations, where 6.2 percent of high school and associate-level postings required AI skills in 2024.
The public sector is more open on AI roles. In the same data, “nearly 19 percent of public sector AI jobs are posted at the HS/AA level compared to only 9 percent of private sector AI jobs”, and nearly 25 percent of AI postings in both sectors list no education requirement at all. The policy changes above are visible here too.
AI threatens the stepping stones. Joint research by Opportunity@Work and the Brookings Institution, as reported by Opportunity@Work in 2026 (advocacy source), counts more than 15 million workers without degrees in jobs highly exposed to AI, nearly 11 million of them in “gateway” occupations that historically led to better-paid work. The same organisation warns that AI-driven screening tools are “increasingly deciding who gets seen at all”. If the degree screen is replaced by an opaque algorithmic screen, the job seeker has gained little. Our guide to resume writing when AI reads first covers how to make skills legible to those systems.
How should you treat your next move as a market-entry decision?
A company entering a new market studies where barriers are low, where demand is growing and what it takes to compete. The same logic works for a career move without a degree, or with a degree in the wrong field. The table below is a CEOtudent editorial framework that sorts roles into five “doors” based on the evidence above.
| Door | What the evidence shows | Typical examples | How you get assessed | Your move |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Legally gated | Degree or licence required by law; no policy removes it | Physicians, lawyers, many nursing and engineering roles | Licence exam | Do not fight the gate; decide whether the credential is worth its cost |
| 2. Reset door, private market | Degree share in ads fell; BLS entry level already below a degree | Insurance and real estate sales, claims, property management, supervisors | Interview, sales or licence tests, track record | Enter fast, but check growth and AI exposure first |
| 3. Policy door, state government | Committed states cut degree requirements in graduate-entry roles | Software developers, analysts, managers in state agencies | Structured interviews, experience substitution | Use as a bridge into graduate-level work |
| 4. Assessed door, federal | Law requires technical assessments by late 2027 | Competitive-service roles, IT management series | Job knowledge tests, work simulations, structured interviews | Prepare for the test, not the questionnaire |
| 5. Unwritten door | No degree in the ad, but an implicit expectation | Much of the UK market; many US tech and startup roles | Portfolio, referral, work sample | Make proof of work visible and checkable |
Five doors: CEOtudent editorial framework built on the sources in this article. It is a planning tool, not a measured classification.
Pick the door before the job title. Door 2 is the fastest entry and the weakest position if the role shrinks; door 3 is slower to find but leads to higher-paid, growing work; door 4 rewards preparation most. For roles that recover after downturns, compare your target with the data in layoff-resilient careers.
The 6-question degree-line test
Use this before you apply, or before you rule yourself out. It is a CEOtudent editorial framework.
- Is the degree legally required? Look for a licence, a regulated title or a statutory qualification. If yes, you are at door 1.
- What does BLS list as typical entry education for this occupation? If it is below a bachelor’s degree, the degree in the ad is probably a preference. Apply if you meet the rest.
- Does the ad offer an experience substitution, and does it say how much? “Or equivalent experience” with a number of years is a real door. “Degree preferred” with no alternative is weaker.
- Is the employer in a jurisdiction that committed to skills-based hiring? Public employers in committed states, and federal agencies, are under explicit policy pressure to accept alternatives.
- What assessment will replace the degree? If the ad names a structured interview, a job knowledge test or a work simulation, that is what you prepare for. If it names nothing, expect a self-rating questionnaire or an automated screen, and tailor your application to it.
- Can you produce evidence for that assessment within 90 days? One reviewed work sample, a scored practice test or a documented project beats a new certificate.
Scoring: count your clear “yes” answers to questions 2 to 6 (question 1 is a gate). Four or five: apply now. Two or three: apply and build the missing evidence in parallel. Zero or one: treat this role as a target for next year, not this month.
How do you build the evidence these employers test?
The student side follows from what employers use once the degree is gone. OPM names structured interviews, job knowledge tests and work-simulation interviews as the most frequent federal alternatives, and the Chance to Compete Act requires assessments based on a written job analysis. So start from the task list (the job announcement and series standards for federal roles; O*NET and the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook for private ones), rehearse the format as well as the content, and build one realistic work sample per target role, such as an analysis, a process document or a small tool. Our guide to how companies test AI skills in interviews covers one fast-growing part of this, and the 4-factor decision matrix helps pick which skill to prove first.
What this does not mean
- It does not mean degrees no longer pay. Removing a requirement widens who can apply. It does not equalise pay or promotion.
- It does not mean hiring changed as much as postings. The state and occupation data here are job ads. The best hiring-level evidence, covered in yesterday’s piece, shows much smaller changes.
- It does not mean every committed state follows through. The gains in the state table range from 5 to 32 points, and announcements without assessment capacity change little. Only 15 percent of the 117 federal agencies OPM tracked had dedicated assessment psychologists.
- It does not mean the 2017-2020 reset data describe today’s market. They describe a direction, not current requirements.
Frequently asked questions
Is skills-based hiring real in 2026?
In parts of the market. More than half of US states have committed to it for public jobs, and state job ads have measurably changed. Federal law now requires skills assessments by late 2027. In most private hiring, the change in actual hires has been small.
Which employers are most likely to hire without a degree?
State governments in committed states, federal agencies moving to technical assessments, and private employers in occupations where BLS already lists sub-degree entry, such as insurance and real estate sales, claims, property management and supervisory roles.
Which states removed degree requirements first?
Maryland in March 2022, followed in 2022 by Colorado and Tennessee; Utah passed a related law in 2021. By November 2024, 25 states had acted, according to NBER Working Paper 33220.
What does the Chance to Compete Act change for federal job seekers?
It requires agencies to examine applicants with position-specific technical assessments based on a job analysis, not mainly on self-assessment questionnaires, from three years after enactment in December 2024. It also requires OPM to review whether minimum education requirements are justified.
Does AI make degree requirements more or less likely?
Both forces exist. AI skills are still requested mostly in degree-level postings, but public employers post a larger share of AI jobs at sub-degree level, and about a quarter of AI postings list no education requirement. AI screening tools may replace the degree filter with a less visible one.
Sources
- Heck J, Corcoran de Castillo B, Blair PQ, Debroy P. Tearing the Paper Ceiling: The Impact of State Commitments to Remove Degree Requirements on Public Awareness and Job Opportunities for STARs. NBER Working Paper 33220, December 2024. Not peer reviewed; three authors are affiliated with Opportunity@Work.
- U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Chance to Compete Act of 2024 Consolidated Report to Congress (Public Law 118-188). December 2025.
- Public Law 118-188, Chance to Compete Act of 2024, 138 Stat. 2644. Approved 23 December 2024. U.S. Government Publishing Office.
- Executive Order 13932 of June 26, 2020, Modernizing and Reforming the Assessment and Hiring of Federal Job Candidates. Federal Register 85(127), 1 July 2020.
- Institute for Responsive Government. Cutting Red Tape for States to Hire Top Talent: A Landscape Overview. 26 June 2025. Nonprofit; state figures cite the National Governors Association.
- National Governors Association and Lightcast. Empowering Progress: Harnessing Skills-Based Strategies to Drive Public Sector Excellence. February 2025. Summary page.
- Georgia Department of Administrative Services, Human Resources Administration. Reevaluate College Degree Requirements to Expand Job Opportunities and Address Recruitment Challenges (Senate Bill 3 report). November 2024.
- Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School Project on Managing the Future of Work. The Emerging Degree Reset. February 2022.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment Projections 2025-35, AI exposure categories table, and AI exposure categories methodology page. 2026.
- Galeano S, Hodge N, Ruder A. By Degree(s): Measuring Employer Demand for AI Skills by Educational Requirements. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Workforce Currents, May 2025.
- Indeed Hiring Lab UK and Ireland. A Degree of Skill: Why UK Job Postings Don’t Often Mention a Formal Education Requirement. 29 August 2024. Company research.
- Lara S. Skills-Based Hiring: Increasing Access to Opportunity. LinkedIn Economic Graph Research Institute, 3 March 2025. Company research.
- Opportunity@Work. Skilled Workers Are Finally Gaining Ground. AI Will Decide Whether They Keep It (State of the Paper Ceiling 2026 release). 23 June 2026. Advocacy organisation.
- Opportunity@Work. Opportunity@Work Releases Policy Playbook for Skills-Based Hiring Ahead of Midterm Election Season. 16 September 2026. Advocacy organisation.
- Opportunity@Work. Opportunity@Work and Brookings Launch AI Readiness Lab. 2026 press release. Advocacy organisation.
The federal and state data tables report figures as printed in their sources, with point changes recomputed by CEOtudent. The two occupation tables joining Burning Glass Institute and NBER posting data to BLS Employment Projections, the 3.5 percent all-occupation growth figure, the five-door framework and the 6-question degree-line test are CEOtudent analyses. Not used: the widely quoted “70 million STARs” and “75 million STARs” figures as precise counts, because Opportunity@Work’s own 2026 releases use both; a LinkedIn “19 times” US talent-pool figure from its 2023 report, which we could not open and which LinkedIn says should not be compared with its 2025 estimates; and Delaware and California counts that appeared only in news coverage.
This content was compiled with the support of AI following in-depth research, then written and prepared for publication by the CEOtudent editorial team.
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