Higher education is supposed to be the ticket to employment. But in some Bay Area counties, workers with a high school diploma have lower unemployment rates than those with bachelor’s degrees or higher.

Experts suggested the Bay Area’s backwards numbers, which run counter to the national trend, could be the result of too-few lower-wage workers, many of whom have been driven out by skyrocketing housing prices and the rising cost of living.

“We have employers call us all the time (saying), ‘I’m looking for low-wage, entry-level workers,’” said Kris Stadelman, director of NOVA Workforce Development in Sunnyvale.

But there are few workers willing to take on those positions who don’t already have jobs, she said.

In Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, the unemployment rate for workers with a high school degree is 3.3 percent, compared to a 3.6 percent rate for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 American Community Survey, which measures unemployment by educational attainment for workers between 25 and 64 years old.

The same situation exists in two other Bay Area counties —Marin and Sonoma — where workers with at least a bachelor’s degree don’t have the lowest unemployment rate.

The trend is starkest in Sonoma County, where workers without a high school degree have a 0.2 percent unemployment rate compared to a 4.4 percent rate for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Workers with a high school diploma in that county have an unemployment rate of 2.8 percent.

Statewide, workers with a high school diploma have an unemployment rate of 6.2 percent, nearly double the 3.5 percent rate of those with a bachelor’s or higher.

Fabriz Lemus, 28, said he’s had no trouble finding work, including a stint as a security officer at Apple’s Cupertino offices where he got to see celebrities like Al Gore and Metallica who were visiting the tech company.

Lemus, who does not have a college degree, currently works safe2core, a San Jose company that scans for and drills holes in cement to reach gas and power lines. In January, he moved out to Arizona, but came back because there wasn’t enough work there.

In the meantime, safe2core couldn’t find enough qualified workers, he said. “As soon as I moved out, even when I was out in Arizona, they were flying me here (to work),” Lemus said.

Though experts caution against relying too heavily on one year of data, they said the census numbers could be a signal of a low-wage worker shortage in the region.

Chris Benner, a sociology professor and director of the Santa Cruz Institute for Social Transformation at UC Santa Cruz, said low-wage workers living in the Bay Area who don’t have a job may be choosing to leave.

“We’re seeing out-migration of many people from Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, presumably because of the high housing costs,” Benner said. “That out-migration is disproportionately from lower income residents.”

He added that housing costs driving out lower-wage workers “would have become much more pronounced in the last year or two.” Lemus, who said he makes a little more than $30 an hour now, is saving to buy a home — in Arizona, where the cost of living is far lower.

Census numbers back up the idea of a relatively small labor pool of less educated workers in the Bay Area. About 56 percent of workers between the ages of 25 and 64 in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, and 64 percent in Marin County, have at least a bachelor’s degree. In California as a whole, that number is 38 percent.

A smaller pool can benefit workers who might otherwise struggle finding work, like those with disabilities, a history of long-term joblessness or past criminal convictions.

“If 2017 is real and not an outlier, the explanation is the tightening labor market where employers are hiring people they might have passed over in prior years,” said Stephen Levy, director and senior economist at the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy.

Stadelman, whose organization provides workforce and employment training to workers at all educational levels, said that while companies hiring entry-level employees are taking a second look at people they once ignored, technology companies continue to be more selective. And that has particularly affected older, highly educated workers.

“We tell people, for every year of experience you have, that’s a month of unemployment,” she said.

But workers with at least a bachelor’s degree continue to be in high demand. Their unemployment rate ranges from 1 percent in Napa County to 4.4 percent in Sonoma County, which is likely fairly close to full employment, Benner said.

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Why is Santa Clara County’s gender wage gap the largest in the Bay Area?

Bay Area cities rank in Top Ten for residents’ financial fitness And those workers are still better paid than their less educated counterparts. A worker in Santa Clara County with a high school degree had median annual earnings of about $34,500, according to 2017 census figures. For workers with a bachelor’s degree, the median earnings are $81,700 — and more for workers with graduate degrees.

Stadelman, who said she wants nothing more than a “good labor shortage,” said she hopes competition for less-educated workers will help bring up their wages.

“There’s work for sure,” said Lemus, the cement driller. “But finding a good paying job is hard.”