The staggering highs and lows of the recent US economy and their effect on the labor force has been deeply unsettling. The US has come through the COVID-19 recession, the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, followed by the quickest recovery ever. One trend in the workforce has remained unaltered throughout this historic change: the increasing need for workers to have greater levels of education in order to succeed in the modern economy. The US economy is bifurcated between a large but sluggish blue-collar and skilled-trades economy and a smaller but faster-growing managerial and professional economy. This is leading to a widening economic divide between those who have postsecondary education and those who do not. The projections of education demand outlined in this report rest on a combination of historical data and growth forecasts. The economy will continue to create jobs for workers with a high school diploma or less. But these jobs, in many cases, do not offer high enough earnings for the workers who hold them to adequately maintain a home and raise a family. The labor force will be increasingly divided between those who have postsecondary education and those who don't. But it is becoming ever clearer that postsecondary education or training is the only path for most workers to a middle-class lifestyle.