This post links the 22% to 31% of 8th graders from 1992 to 2022 who could not read @ a basic level with the shortages of qualified people we have today - from doctors to policemen to air traffic controllers. The post shows how these 8th graders in 1992 are now 46 years old & do not contribute meaningfully to society - & what's worse, their lives are not fulfilling. Just like in the 8th grade reading test the same percentage of people fail an adult survey entitled Do Adults Have The Skills They Need To Thrive In A Changing World? while the gap between the highest & lowest performing adults widened in the last ten years as technology & automation left more poorly prepared people behind.
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Even before the enactment of ObamaCare there was a looming shortage of doctors forecast in America. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects a primary care shortage within the next decade of up to 55,000 doctors & up to 124,000 physicians derived from an estimated 268,000 retirements & possibly only 15,000 new doctors coming in each year. With the cuts in doctors' fees in many hospitals & medical insurance programs along with the persistent threat of universal healthcare's price controls & rationing in the proposed Medicare For All entitlement it is no wonder that people would choose to become a warehouse manager rather than a brain surgeon.
More recently the shortage extended to pharmacists, accountants, & policemen.
According to the Pharmacy College Application Service the number of pharmacy-school applicants dropped by more than a third from its peak a decade ago resulting in pharmacies reducing hours or even closing stores on weekends because of staff shortages.
The shortage of accountants is forcing small & mid sized firms to hire overseas accountants even when the U.S. income tax filing season gets in full swing - which we are just about in now. Imagine what this says - foreigners in Bengaluru, India or South Africa know how to complete an American income tax return but Americans don't.
The accounting profession was hurt starting with a 9% decline in U.S. students who received a bachelor's degree in accounting (57,500 degrees in 2012 to 52,500 degrees in 2019) with the downward trend continuing. As I expected to find in researching this post, fewer people are sitting for the four part CPA examination. Evidently working the fields in the hot Arizona sun is not the only job Americans won't or can't do.
You don't have to check further than your local news to learn of the shortage of policemen. For instance Chicago is losing two officers for each one it graduates from the police academy & San Jose has seen a two thirds drop in applications to the police force over recent years. Twenty years ago the NYPD had 20 applicants for every open position - today there is a 1,700 policeman shortage resulting from the defunding of police movement & a general demoralizing mindset of putting the criminal as a first priority & the victim last or not @ all. This type of recruitment problem & shortage extends to the border patrol, military, & the national police force - the FBI.
And just within the last few months the shortage of male public school teachers has taken its place on center stage as principals struggle to find qualified applicants with teaching credentials. The share of the number of male public school teachers has dropped from a third to under a quarter in the last 50 years thereby depriving many young boys of a male figure of authority @ home & in school.
In this regard on January 29 the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) issued The Nation's Report Card 2025 which highlighted continuing declines in reading scores for both 4th & 8th graders. Math scores showed a slight decline for 8th graders & a slight uptick for 4th graders.
Tennessee is trying to improve this situation by passing a law that students be held back in third grade if they don't meet certain benchmarks - apparently acknowledging my premise for @ least the last two decades: "How do you get to the 9th grade if you are only reading @ a third grade level?"
And now the one I have dreaded the most - the test scores of the 40,000 candidates who took the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam declined about 10% during the pandemic meaning these people don't qualify to sit for the Professional Engineering exam which must be passed in order to become a licensed professional engineer. The result is a shortage of engineers & a lower level of competency among those who passed (with the lower scores). Civil structural engineers, who failed to answer questions about the use of trusses in construction of bridges & roadways, had the highest first attempt fail rate of all the disciplines @ 35% - the other major engineering disciplines (chemical, electrical, & mechanical) ranged between 25% to 30% first attempt fail rate.
And of course the mid air collision on January 29 highlighted once again that there is a significant shortage of air traffic controllers in the U.S. The FAA attributes the cause of the shortage to a rigorous training process, mandatory retirement age (set by Congress in 1972 @ 56 years old), & difficulty in attracting qualified candidates under 31 years old. At the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City the attrition rate can reach 40 to 50%.
To summarize the miserable trend portrayed above, our education system has produced a society that has declined in medical safety & service (shortage of doctors & pharmacists) as well as physical safety (shortage of policemen, border patrol agents, military recruits, & air traffic controllers). The lack of qualified accountants & CPAs will result in erroneous business reports that will swallow up investments & pension assets - e.g., Macy's experienced a $151 million of false bookkeeping entries & coverup by a lone employee that went undetected by its auditor KPMG for over three years thereby raising questions about the competency of the auditors as investors' losses mounted. Businesses will not be able to expand @ their desired rate because there are not enough qualified engineers to design, engineer, construct, & support such expansions & increases in productivity - the critical factor for economic growth & increasing our standard of living & prosperity.
For an explanation of how this happened please refer to the following graphic which was made from data from The Nation's Report Card 2025 mentioned above. The blue line shows the % of 8th graders who could read @ the basic or above level from 1992 to 2022. The red line shows that the share of 8th graders reading @ the basic or better level has dropped back to the same share as 1994 & only 1 percentage point higher than it was in 1992.
The NAEP basic level denotes partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge & skills that are fundamental for performance @ the NAEP proficient level (i.e., being able to read so that you can function in the world). In 2022, the percentage of 8th grade public school students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level in reading was 29 percent nationally, with 10 states having a lower percentage of proficient 8th grade readers than the national level: AK & KS - both @ 26%; DE @ 24%; TX @ 23%; MS, AL, WV, & DC - all @ 22%; OK @ 21%; & NM @ 18%.
click on graphic to enlarge
The reading statistics for 8th graders are important because people who are not good readers by the 8th grade most likely never will be - being disinclined to read as an adult thereby limiting their life's potential.
But most importantly, the graphic underlies the connection between people who were once 8th graders & now are adults - someone in the 8th grade in 1992 is now 46 years old. The area above the blue line curve means that the 22% to 31% of the 8th graders from 1992 to 2022 who could not read above a basic level are now adults 46 to 18 years old who probably still don't read @ a basic level. This adds up to tens of millions of people.
I highlight this connection between the results for 8th graders, who were poor readers when they were 13, & adults who struggle to make a living. On December 10 the OECD released the results of their latest study entitled Survey of Adult Skills 2023: Do Adults Have The Skills They Need To Thrive In A Changing World?. Thirty-one countries participated. Click here to see the results for the United States. The results for the other thirty countries are on the first link.
The survey is "a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). (It) provides a comprehensive overview of adults' literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving skills – skills that are fundamental for personal, economic, and societal development."
In summary the United States is below the OECD average in literacy, numeracy, & adaptive problem solving with the biggest difference being in numeracy - see Figure 1 of the United States report.
The survey found that 28% of adults scored @ Level 1 or below, meaning they have low literacy proficiency - right in line with the 22% to 31% of 8th graders (now adults taking the OECD survey) who couldn't read @ a basic level between 1992 & 2022.
The survey for the U.S. report states that "at Level 1, they can understand short texts and organized lists when information is clearly indicated, find specific information and identify relevant links. Those below Level 1 can at most understand short, simple sentences. At the other end of the spectrum, 13% of adults (OECD average: 12%) scored at Levels 4 or 5 in literacy and are high performers. These adults can comprehend and evaluate long, dense texts across several pages, grasp complex or hidden meanings, and use prior knowledge to understand texts and complete tasks."
The survey found "In the United States, average results in 2022-23 went down compared to 2012/15 in literacy and numeracy. In both literacy and numeracy, the share of low-performing adults (scoring at Level 1 or below) increased. Meanwhile, the share of high-performing adults (scoring at Levels 4 or 5) remained stable (Figure 4 of the U.S. report). In both domains, therefore, trends were more negative at the lower end of the distribution, and the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing adults widened between 2012/15 and 2022-23."
The OECD adult study & others have shown that adults who were poor readers in the 8th grade experienced more bouts of unemployment, overall low or poor wages, frequent enrollment in the food stamps program, higher disability payments, higher rates of single parenthood & child poverty, elevated mortality & a low level of individual well-being & civic engagement. These adults are generally thought of as less trustworthy, less likely to vote, & more likely to not be in excellent health.
About a quarter of the U.S. population is enrolled in Medicaid & about half that many are on food stamps. Enrollees in both of these welfare programs are likely to be poor readers.
Now if you graduated from high school & can't read, & are smart enough to know that you can't read, teach yourself or find someone who can teach you.
If you graduated from high school & can't read & don't do anything about it your life will most likely be one of difficulty, hardship, & more than your fair share of unhappiness - or even worse.
In short, anyone who can't read will never develop their full human potential. They will never realize that they make out of life what they strive for & therefore have not only cheated themselves out of an enhanced future but society out of a contributing member capable of filling the types of jobs described herein whose shortages plague the country more & more every day.
