Arizona is nationally known as a top state for workforce quality and availability. The state produces and attracts high-skills talented workers, as well as a steady supply of college-educated job-seekers.
- Arizona’s workforce pipeline is continually fed by a network of world-class public universities: Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University.
- Arizona State University in Tempe is the largest public university in the U.S. with over 82,000 enrolled in the 2014 - 2015 academic year.
- Total enrollment for Arizona’s three public universities in the 2013 - 2014 academic year was 143,700.
- These institutions produce top-ranked degree programs and continue to advance technologies that are solving some of the world’s most challenging problems.
Arizona businesses benefit from excellent community colleges located throughout the state offering skilled training and certification programs for workers.
- Maricopa County Community College District in the Phoenix region is the largest community college system in the country.
- Many of Arizona’s community colleges, including Maricopa and Pima County colleges, offer customizable workforce training opportunities to businesses that require a specific training for their employees.
Approximately 1 in 13 (or 76 per 1,000) Arizonans were enrolled in a higher-degree granting institute in Arizona in 2014.
- There are more than 506,000 students (not including online) enrolled at Arizona's higher education degree-granting institutions.
- Arizona’s public universities total enrollment: 143,700
- Arizona’s community colleges total enrollment: 335,000
- Thunderbird School of Global Management total enrollment: 1,000
- Grand Canyon University total enrollment: 11,000
- Other Colleges & Universities total enrollment: 16,000
In 2010, the most recent year data were collected, there was a net migration of students from other states to Arizona of all first-time degree seeking undergraduates, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
- 22,575 students migrated into the state and 5,430 from the state (net 17,145).
- Arizona ranked 2nd behind Pennsylvania for net in-migration of students.
Arizona boasts a young workforce.
- The national average age is 37.2; Arizona's is 36.
- Arizona's millennial population grew 4 percent from 2009 to 2013 and today totals more than 1.35 million people.
- 20-somethings make up 23 percent of the Phoenix region’s total population.
- Arizona ranks #2 in workforce quality and availability according to CNBC.
Arizona’s population centers are robust, with more than 2 million workers living in the Greater Phoenix region and an additional 450,000 in the Tucson metropolitan area.
- Between 2007 and 2012, the Phoenix metro area added more than 100,000 people holding a bachelor’s degree or more education, according to a NewGeography.com study of Census figures.
- Phoenix’s rate of growth, 13.3 percent, was 11th highest among U.S. metro areas with more than 1 million people.
- Phoenix added people in this demographic at a rate higher than Dallas-Fort Worth (12th), San Diego (19th), Las Vegas (23rd) and San Francisco-Oakland (25th). The national rate was 10.6 percent.