While it is daunting to confront the variety of education and training providers within a specific labor market, the number and variety of employers is even greater. Even in a small city like Frankton, the Chamber of Commerce lists 260 employers with more than one hundred employees, obviously excluding many smaller establishments. A more complex region like Rosefield, with its sprawl over a thirty-mile region, is even more varied. Fortunately, distinct patterns emerged from this variety; otherwise, it would be impossible to describe the demand side of the sub-baccalaureate labor market. Where there was no distinct pattern--for example, in the disagreement among employers about the value of community colleges, especially in Frankton and Palmdale--we can only conclude that experiences have been so heterogeneous and often so idiosyncratic as to prevent any consensus from developing.
In this section we examine the skills that employers require, their hiring standards, promotion practices, and finally some trends which seem to be emerging. The results--particularly employers' stress of job-specific skills and certain personal capacities and the preference of employers for experience over formal schooling--contrast sharply with the practices of education providers. They also contrast with the simple (or simple-minded) assertion that sub-baccalaureate jobs will require more formal schooling because they show how varied the role of formal schooling is. The trends are also disturbing because they suggest that--at least in the absence of any intervention--sub-baccalaureate labor markets are likely to become even more fragmented, disjointed between providers and employers, with increasing cyclical variation and inconsistent incentives to individuals and education providers. The results in this section are therefore necessary to an overall understanding of how well sub-baccalaureate labor markets operate, but they make the need for fundamental changes even more imperative.