Education Attainment Affects Your Earnings and Unemployment Chances
US Dept. of Labor/BLS
The road to riches is paved by education–or so the data suggest. As the chart below shows, median weekly earnings for U.S. workers in 2003 increased with educational attainment. There was a substantial difference in earnings from the highest to the lowest levels of education attained: the median earnings of workers who had a professional or doctoral degree were more than three times those of high school dropouts.
But workers did not need that much education to earn a bigger paycheck; the payoff began for those who completed high school. For example, the $158 differential for workers with a high school diploma over those who did not graduate represents a nearly 30% increase in median weekly earnings.
Stay in school to stay employed. Drop out of high school and you’ll work less . . . a lot less! You will be unemployed more; at more than twice the rate of your classmates who go on and get an associate degree. What does all this mean? Get as much education and training as you can, all through your career—it pays!