JOBS WHITE PEOPLE WON'T DO:

Seventy-percent of construction companies nationwide are having trouble finding qualified workers, according to the Associated General Contractors of America; in Washington, the proportion is 80 percent. There are already at least 3,259 more jobs than Washingtonians to fill them in such skilled trades as carpentry, electrical, plumbing, sheet-metal work and pipe-fitting, the state auditor reports. Many pay more than the Washington average annual wage of $54,000. Of 260,000 "career jobs" expected to become available here over the next five years, according to the Washington Roundtable, an association of employers, one-third will not require bachelor's degrees.

The number of workers needed in the construction trades nationally is expected to rise 11 percent through 2026, far faster than other occupations, or by 747,600 new jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. Construction, along with health care and personal care, will account for one-third of all new jobs through 2022, the agency says.

It also predicts that, between now and 2022, there will be a need for 138,200 new plumbers. While 7,000 people become electricians every year, about 9,000 retire, according to the National Electrical Contractors Association; by 2021, the nation will have to turn out 17,557 new electricians annually. And as politicians debate a massive overhaul of the nation's roads, bridges and airports, the U.S. Department of Education reportsthat there will be 68 percent more job openings in infrastructure-related fields in the next five years than there are people training to fill them.

"The economy is definitely pushing this issue to the forefront," said Amy Morrison Goings, president of the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, which educates students in these fields. "There isn't a day that goes by that a business doesn't contact the college and ask the faculty who's ready to go to work."

In all, some 30 million jobs in the United States that pay an average of $55,000 per year don't require bachelor's degrees, according to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce.

Yet the march to bachelor's degrees continues. The number of bachelor's degrees conferred has more than doubled in the last five decades, from 839,730 in 1970 to nearly 1.9 million in 2014-15, the last period for which the figures are available, the U.S. Department of Education reports. And while people who get them still are more likely to be employed and make more money than those who don't, that premium appears to be softening; their median earnings were lower in 2015, when adjusted for inflation, than in 2010, the department says. Meanwhile, the number of students who borrow to pay for college has increased from half in 1989 to nearly 70 percent now, and their average debt has grown from $15,200 to $26,300.

"There's that perception of the bachelor's degree being the American dream, the best bang for your buck," said Kate Blosveren Kreamer, deputy executive director of Advance CTE, an association of state officials who work in career and technical education. "The challenge is that in many cases it's become the fallback. People are going to college without a plan, without a career in mind, because the mindset in high school is just, 'Go to college.'"

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