Sir Alan Michael Sugar is one of the wealthiest men in England and fills Donald Trump’s seat for the UK version of The Apprentice. He dropped out of school at 16. John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods Market, went to college, but dropped out six times. The relationships of Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg with Harvard are nearly legendary, and neither story includes a four-year degree.

At the beginning of this century, there was a widely held belief that four-year degrees were becoming unnecessary for success.  Of the five wealthiest people in the world in 2000, only one, Warren Buffett, held a college degree. “Academic” was a dirty word. “B-School thinking” wasn’t a compliment. Of the nearly 14 million people unemployed in January of this year, about 12 million didn’t have four-year degrees either.

“There are two dramatically different pictures among the unemployed and it can be difficult to reconcile them,” says Mark Angott, president of Angott Search Group. “The unemployment rate for those with a four-year degree is down to 4.2 percent, nearly half the national average. Employers who are trying to hire college-educated workers are seeing the difficulty.”

January’s unemployment figures were widely seen as a disappointment. The unemployment rate fell from 9.4 to 9 percent, yet, with only 34,000 jobs created, the rate drop was driven by the more than half a million people who stopped looking for a job during the month. For those with a four-year degree, the unemployment rate also dropped— from 4.8 to 4.2 percent—but its decline was the result of 227,000 new jobs that were created.

“Job losses during the recession didn’t spare anyone. MBA holders were taking to the streets looking for work like everyone else,” notes Angott. “Yet, as companies have begun to rehire, they are almost entirely hiring for positions that require four-year degrees or better. If employers are looking at a 9 percent unemployment rate and expecting they’ll be able to find high-quality candidates, they are going to be surprised when trying to find a CPA, a network administrator or any type of engineer.”

Over the last decade, total U.S. employment has grown by a meager 1.5 percent—cumulatively. Over the same time, U.S. employment for those with a four-year degree has grown by more than 20 percent.

“This isn’t a short-term situation. We are an advanced economy that requires an increasing number of workers with advanced skills in order to grow,” says Angott.

If  the approximately 700,000 jobs created in the last 12 months, virtually all of them required college degrees.  Most interestingly, the rate of growth of this workforce is slipping. In 2010, the total number of four-year degree holders in the U.S. workforce increased by only 364,000, nearly a quarter million fewer than were added in 2004, the previous low-water mark of the last twenty years.

“In a situation like this, the employment market becomes much more closed off. Employers avoid publicly advertising many positions, not wanting to deal with the flood of unqualified resumes. At the same time, top candidates avoid publicly posted positions, not wanting to take part in the cattle call,” says Angott. “This means that networking, creating candidate pipelines, and developing relationships with recruiters become the only surefire methods for companies to fully access the market’s available talent.”