Bilingual skills are already in demand. Employers report needing them, and they’re paying higher wages to people who have them.
Dual language programs are how districts turn that demand into a skill their own students graduate with. But that result depends on building and maintaining a high-quality program. One that carries students from their first day of kindergarten all the way to a credential that proves what they can do.
Employers are paying for bilingual staff
A 2025 survey of 56 businesses across Southern California found that 93 percent of them employ bilingual staff. In nearly a third of those companies, bilingual employees make up the majority of the workforce. Nearly three-quarters of the businesses said it helps them reach more customers, while 70 percent said it helps them keep the ones they have.
The pay data tells a similar story. Bilingual employees earn an estimated 5 to 20 percent more per hour than monolingual peers, according to language-testing research cited in recent reporting on North Carolina’s language programs. This isn’t a one-time bonus, but a persistent gap, industry after industry, that compounds over time.
Learn more about the benefits of bilingualism:
The jobs are already here
In North Carolina, Toyota’s $13.9 billion battery plant in Greensboro, Novo Nordisk’s expansion in Clayton, and Siemens Mobility’s $220 million rail manufacturing hub in Lexington are all creating thousands of local jobs that need workers who can move between languages and cultures without a translator in the room. These jobs are arriving in the same counties where districts decide whether dual language funding stays or goes.
North Carolina has more than 300 dual language immersion programs running in eight languages: Cherokee, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Spanish, and Urdu. That number keeps climbing because districts are starting to treat language programs the way they’d treat a career and technical education program: as infrastructure for career readiness.
The same pattern is playing out nationwide, where more than 3,600 dual language programs are now trying to keep pace with the same economic pressures North Carolina districts are facing.
A credential that hasn’t caught up yet
Every state, plus Washington, D.C., now offers some version of the Seal of Biliteracy, a credential that says, on paper, this student can function in two languages. How a student earns it varies by state. In some places, it’s automatic: the exam scores are already sitting in the data system, and the state notifies the student directly. In others, a school has to catch it: flag the eligible student, confirm the requirement, and put it on the transcript.
It’s in that second version where things fall through. If nobody at the school is watching for it, the credential doesn’t show up, even for a student who earned it.
In states leading the way on this, including Illinois (which requires public universities to establish criteria for course credit), Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Rhode Island, public colleges typically grant up to 12 credit hours to students with the Seal. Most states, however, aren’t there yet, which is exactly why a district’s job extends far beyond the launch of an immersion program.
What it takes to run a dual language program well
While no labor market data guarantees anything, it does describe an opportunity. Making sure students can actually take advantage of it is up to school districts.
Few districts have a person dedicated full-time to all of the specific jobs of running programs:
- Finding teachers with native-level proficiency in the target language
- Building a curriculum designed for two languages (not translated from English)
- Training administrators and teachers on DL best practices
- Regularly assessing both students and the program itself to know where progress stands
And, the logistics of running a program well are hard to manage from scratch. North Carolina’s own track record backs this up: the districts that built successful programs largely did so by pairing with organizations that specialize in dual language education.
These partnerships offered access to qualified bilingual educators, a strategic coach, and professional development for teachers and administrators, freeing up hours that would otherwise go into figuring things out from scratch so districts could put that time toward other work supporting student success.
Participate Learning is one of those partners. We’ve worked with schools and districts to implement immersion programs for almost 20 years, and we’ve spent that time learning exactly what it takes to make these programs work. Across our K–5 Dual Language network of 125 schools and 41 districts, our partnership renewal rate is 98 percent.
We built our Dual Language Mastery Program to put that experience directly in the hands of the teachers and administrators running these programs day to day. It covers the foundations of dual language, best practices, instructional strategies, and assessment and evaluation, delivered online and organized by role, so dual language teachers and school or district administrators each get training suited to what they’re actually doing.
With this program, districts can give teachers and administrators what they need to run a dual language program that develops bilingual students year after year. That freed-up time matters most in exactly the place where the credential piece tends to fall through.
A district running a program without outside support usually has one team stretched across curriculum, teacher training, and assessment. Almost none of that team’s time is left over to also track down which students qualify for a Seal of Biliteracy, confirm it with the state, and get it onto a transcript.
When a partnership takes curriculum and training off a district’s plate, someone actually has the bandwidth to work with the state Department of Public Instruction to get that process right, so the students who spent nine years in the program leave with the credential to show for it, not just the skill.
Frequently asked questions
Does bilingual worker demand actually change what a district should prioritize, or is it just a talking point?
It’s measurable, not aspirational. In 2025, employers said bilingual staff help them reach more customers (nearly three-quarters) and keep the ones they have (70 percent)—and they’re paying a 5 to 20 percent wage premium for it. A dual language graduate walks straight into that demand, often in the same regional economy their school sits in.
Does dual language immersion do anything besides teach a second language?
Yes. Students in dual language immersion (DLI) programs consistently outperform peers in core academic subjects, not just the target language, a pattern researchers link to the cognitive and literacy demands of learning across two languages at once. The academic case and the workforce case reinforce each other.
Is the Seal of Biliteracy worth building a program around?
It’s a real credential, offered in some form in every state and Washington, D.C. But it’s still catching up to its own value because most employers and colleges don’t yet know how to weigh it. Illinois does, because it ties the Seal directly to college credit. Until more states follow, a district’s job is making sure students and families know the Seal exists and what it’s actually worth locally.
What does early return on investment look like, before workforce outcomes are even measurable?
Family engagement. In a 2025 Participate Learning survey across 10 North Carolina districts, 86 percent of parents said their child was excited to be in the program, 89 percent reported a positive experience with the teacher, and more than three-quarters said their child was building skills like communication and problem-solving they could already see mattering.
Is this demand concentrated in a few industries, or is it everywhere?
Everywhere, roughly. The 2025 UNITE-LA employer survey spanned a range of business sizes and sectors, with nearly a quarter of respondents doing business in Latin America. There’s no industry a district can point to and say, “This doesn’t apply to our graduates.”
