Conventional wisdom regards a college degree as necessary for a well-paying job and a good life. By focusing on average earnings, this conventional wisdom obscures the enormous variability in outcomes at each education level; in fact, the top half of high school graduates earn in the same range as the bottom half of college graduates. However the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics presents summary data for earnings by education level at the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles. These data show that the upper portion of the high school range ($726 at the 50th percentile to $1,491 at the 90th percentile) sits substantially above the lower portion of the college range ($593 to $1,187).9 A worker is not better off in the pool of below-average college graduates than in the pool of above-average high school graduates. This report uses original analysis of U.S. census data to give a detailed picture of the range of outcomes in earnings for those with different levels of education. It shows that the substantial overlap in income between college graduates and noncollege graduates holds even after controlling for age; that is, it is not an artifact produced by late-career high school graduates outearning early-career college graduates. It then shows that geographic differences in overlap are generally small. Areas with the highest levels of overlap are typically smaller regions dominated by industries that pay high wages to high school workers, while areas with the lowest overlap are large cities with high wages for skilled workers. Finally, the report examines the typical occupations of workers in different segments of the distribution. It shows that high-earning high school graduates are typically employed in predominantly noncollege occupations, rather than in occupations that also employ large numbers of college graduates. The bottom earners among college graduates tend to work in fields that do require a degree but do not pay high wages, or in fields that do not require a degree. [Foreword by Oren Cass.]
