Each year many thousands of America’s college students complete their studies and embark on professional careers, believing that the sky’s the limit, especially if they’ve worked hard to prepare for what lies before them.

After all, again, this is America, the country with boundless opportunities for those dedicated to making those opportunities produce the optimum benefits available on their behalf.

What else can be more clear on Graduation Day.

Then, more quickly than most of those graduates can imagine, one year’s work experience has turned into two, then three, then four and so on.

Suddenly, it seems, the career has become a decade long — and from there the years continue to pass, and skills and talents and new insights continue to expand — for most, their experiences and work production becoming more valuable to their employer and the people their companies serve.

During all that, of course, there are marriages, children, increasing challenges and additional responsibilities — at home and at work. Still, for most, everything is “clicking” like a well-oiled machine, with higher earnings and promotions having been attained along the way — and the hope of even greater things to come.

But something that the Wall Street Journal reported in its June 2 edition is eye-opening, even in smaller cities such as Altoona — a place immune to many of the challenges being faced amid economic life in the nation’s big cities but susceptible to many of their impacts nonetheless.

Many people here regard Altoona as a separate economic entity and fail to look “up the road” north to State College and its environs, thus failing to acknowledge the bigger economic corridor that in reality is in place. Once that bigger economic factor is recognized and acknowledged, it isn’t difficult to fathom how some big-city challenges and impacts might be in play here also, for good or not-so-good.

The important thing is to stay tuned to what is going on and try to determine whether a connection or similarities exist, along with cause for concern.

Here is how the Journal began the June 2 article in question:

“No promotion. No notable raises. Not yet 40. You aren’t alone.

“About a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers before their peak earning years, going at least five years without a real boost in pay or position.

“That is the central finding of a new study tracking the careers of 1.3 million midcareer professionals across a range of industries since 2000. It suggests that even in an economy with high employment, many workers run into an invisible barrier to upward mobility just when their careers are supposed to gain momentum.”

The study in question was conducted by the Burning Glass Institute think tank, along with New York University’s School of Professional Studies.

Burning Glass is a leader in labor analytics, advancing data-driven research and practice on the future of work and workers.

Angie Kamath, dean of NYU’s School of Professional Studies, is an expert on analyzing what often are referred to as “midcareer stalls” and refers to “stall” as the new normal for many workers. She says workers need to try to prevent them by acknowledging their possibility early on during their work life and, where possible, have an “adjacent pivot” available so as not to be devastated by new technologies and organizational structures implemented in their workplaces.

A good question these days might be whether the “stall” is widespread in the work lives of many in the Altoona-to-State College corridor, undermining the pluses of working here.