Most U.S. workers find their first job in the service sector. Over half of employed teens and one-third of U.S. workers in their early 20s are hourly workers employed in retail and food service, and these represent nearly 1 in 5 jobs in the U.S. labor force (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2026). The service sector is the first rung on the career ladder for millions of Americans, and represents a long-term career for many. Yet workers in these jobs often contend with low wages, few benefits, and insufficient, inconsistent work hours. For these workers, of whom only 22 percent have earned a postsecondary degree (Ross and Bateman 2019), opportunities to advance their education and build skills could provide an avenue to upward mobility and greater economic security.
Schools have historically been the primary site for education and training, so it stands to reason that research on education and training pathways to desirable career outcomes has largely focused on school-based settings. However, this focus on school settings provides an incomplete picture. The conjunction of longer life spans and a rapidly changing labor market has created a need for continued education and training throughout the life course. Increasingly, workplaces have become an important site for training and skill-building opportunities as more workers weave together earning and learning throughout their careers.
Employers function as gatekeepers who can either expand or foreclose access to learning across the life course. The past decade has witnessed a quiet but significant expansion of corporate-sponsored tuition benefit programs (CSTBs) in the service sector, a shift driven in part by a change to the tax code, which allows employers to provide up to $5,250 in annual tax-exempt educational benefits (Ngo 2025). Many large retail and food service employers have now publicly reported supporting pathways to skill-building and career advancement through a range of work-based learning activities and by sponsoring educational and training opportunities. Yet despite this expansion, remarkably little is known about how workers in these jobs actually experience education and training — what career goals they hold, what opportunities they pursue at and outside of work, what barriers prevent them from taking up employer-sponsored programs, and who, if anyone, provides them with mentorship and career support. Nor do we know how these experiences vary across employers or over the life course.
This brief begins to fill gaps in our knowledge about education and training for workers in low-wage service sector jobs. Drawing on new Shift Project survey data collected in Fall 2025 from around 5,300 adults employed at 144 large service sector employers across the United States, we provide insights into service sector workers’ career aspirations and how education and training fit within them.
Preview of Key Findings:
- In striking contrast with conventional wisdom, we find that the majority of service sector workers consider their jobs to be careers rather than waystations on the way to starting a career. A surprisingly large share of workers aim to remain with their current employer and hope to have an opportunity to advance. This is dramatically different from the dominant narrative of service sector work as transient.
- The vast majority of service sector workers see additional education and training to be important for achieving their career goals – whether they aim to stay in their current job or switch careers.
- Training opportunities offered through employers can create accessible opportunities across the life course, for younger and older workers alike, and provide those with caregiving responsibilities an accessible avenue for continued skill-building.
- Employer-sponsored opportunities are highly variable, and so too are participation rates of their workforces. Comparing across employers is a promising avenue for future research to link program features with persistence and completion rates and ultimately with desirable career mobility outcomes.
Suggested Citation
Jackson, Henri, and Kristen Harknett. 2026. “Earning and Learning in the U.S. Service Sector.” Shift Project research brief.