In pushing the idea that we need more “investment” in higher education and more students completing college, Obama used this line in his February 25 speech: “Right now, three-quarters of the fastest growing occupations require more than a high-school diploma.” Those figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, specifically a document on the 30 fastest-growing occupations. It’s based on employment-change projections for the period 2006-2016.

Why would Obama refer to the proportion of occupations that require college, as opposed to the percentage of jobs in those occupations? It is enlightening to take a close look at the document. The reason appears to be that some of the degree-requiring occupations are quite small; for example, marriage and family therapists need master’s degrees, but are expected to add only 7,000 jobs. In contrast, the personal- and home-care aides field (which uses on-the-job training) is expected to grow by 389,000.

I added up the numbers of jobs in all those occupations where the work is usually done by people with short-term on-the-job training, moderate-term on-the-job training, and post-secondary vocational award (e.g. manicurists). The total is 49 percent of the expected job growth in these 30 fastest-growing occupations. The jobs in this group: personal- and home-care aides, home-health aides, makeup artists (theatrical and performance), medical assistants, skin-care specialists, social- and human-service assistants, gaming-surveillance officers and investigators, pharmacy technicians, dental assistants, gaming and sports book writers and runners, and manicurists and pedicurists.

If you then add in the jobs usually done by people with associate’s degrees (i.e. vocational training usually done in community colleges), the percentage rises to more than 53.

So it would be more accurate to say that in the occupations projected to have the fastest growth from 2006 to 2016, less than half of the jobs are usually done by people with bachelor’s degrees. Putting aside the point that even many of the jobs where a BA is required could be learned by intelligent high-school grads, Obama’s ringing call for more college education is based on a misleading use of statistics.