Not so new news: Your chosen field can impact your earnings just as much as your level of education
New research and data tables released by the U.S. Census Bureau today reveal that workers with quality vocational training can earn just as much as their counterparts with college degrees. The tables represent a study entitled What It’s Worth: Field of Training and Economic Status in 2004, and they analyze issues such as: the relationship between a person’s field of training and his or her monthly earnings, the average number of years taken to complete certain degrees, and the occupation of workers based on their educational attainment and area of study. Figures are further broken down in many cases according to education, sex, age, race, and Hispanic origin.
I browsed through most of the tables on this page, and here are a few of the statistics that I found interesting and valuable…
In 2004, workers in this country with no education past the elementary school level made an average of $1,696 a month (or roughly $20,350 a year), while the average worker with a bachelor’s degree earned a monthly salary of $4,497 and those with professional degrees pulled in an average of $8,414 each month. In other words, college pays off. That’s not to say that finishing high school and receiving some postsecondary training won’t put you in a better position. On average, those who graduated from high school made a monthly income of $2,276, or around $27,300 a year. When compared with high school graduates, workers with vocational training earned an additional $4,200 each year, and people who had received an associate’s degree made an extra $9,780 annually.
Of the fields of training examined, engineering was the most profitable industry for workers with a vocational certificate or an associate’s degree in 2004. Computer-related occupations yielded the highest annual revenues for those with a bachelor’s degree. Workers who held a master’s degree in business earned a sizeable amount more ($7,217 a month) than workers who received an equivalent education in another field (the next highest compensated field of training was computers, at an average of $6,254 a month).
As mentioned above, one of the tables outlines the occupations of workers in the country based on the level of education they received and their field of study. U.S. citizens without a high school diploma in 2004 worked mostly in service and production. High school graduates were employed more often in production, service, clerical, and sales jobs. Those with vocational certificates were spread out more evenly among all occupational categories, with service, craft, and production being among the most popular. Citizens who held associate degrees also were distributed more evenly, with clerical positions garnering the most workers. People who held a bachelor’s degree in 2004 overwhelming gravitated toward managerial and professional occupations, while those with advanced degrees were more heavily concentrated in the professional sector.
The press release issued along with the tables points out that workers who held vocational certificates in engineering earned about as much as workers with bachelor degrees in natural science. In addition, workers in the country with computer-related associate degrees made an income comparable to citizens with a bachelor’s in education or social science. So even though a higher level of education often equates to more money, the field that you chose to focus in will greatly impact your income at each educational level as well. Other notes that the press release made are as follows: business was the most popular field of training in 2004; it took students an average of over a year to complete vocational programs, over four years to fulfill their associate degrees, and over five years to finish out their bachelor degrees; and women pulled in a lower average salary than men at every degree level.
If vocational training is an educational alternative that you’re interested in, you might want to consider which fields offer the most stable salaries. Among all the vocational industries in the U.S. in 2004, full-time jobs in aviation, drafting, electronics, metal working, refrigeration and heating, and transportation yielded some of the highest average monthly earnings.