{"id":20223,"date":"2021-08-15T00:00:38","date_gmt":"2021-08-15T00:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/?p=20223"},"modified":"2025-10-06T20:09:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:09:25","slug":"differences-in-employment-rates-by-educational-attainment-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tamus.edu\/data-science\/2021\/08\/15\/differences-in-employment-rates-by-educational-attainment-levels\/","title":{"rendered":"Differences in Employment Rates by Educational Attainment Levels"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Differences in Employment Rates by Educational Attainment Levels<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"Education<\/a> For the past few months, we have camped out in the US Census Bureau\u2019s Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO)<\/a> dataset, analyzing average earnings of bachelor’s degree-holders from data partner institutions in a variety of ways. The previous posts can be accessed at the data blog home page<\/a>. While those posts looked at earnings data of college graduates, we have yet to explore data comparing employment outcomes based on varying levels of educational attainment. <\/span><\/p>\n

Many conversations about the benefits associated with increased levels of educational attainment typically revolve around earnings, such as someone with a bachelor’s degree earning approximately $1 million more in a lifetime compared to a person with a high school diploma (SSA Research Summary<\/a>). At a more granular level, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks earnings data on a monthly basis through its Current Population Survey (CPS)<\/a>, as the BLS publishes its findings in a variety of locations. One such publication is its Education Pays<\/a> series. As shown in the visualization to the right, adults who are 25-years-old and older with a bachelor’s degree earned $1,305 per week (median usual weekly earnings) in 2020, as compared to the $781 per week that an adult with a “high school diploma, no college” earned. That difference of $524 per week equates to more than $27,000 in additional annual earnings for bachelor’s degree-holders compared to adults with a high school diploma without any college hours. At the top-end are terminal-degreed adults whose median earnings are close to $1,900 per week, or almost $99K per year.<\/p>\n

The earnings-related data are just one facet of employment that the BLS analyzes. A form of employment outcomes that has been tracked longitudinally by the BLS is the unemployment rate by educational attainment for adults 25 years and older, which is a data point that <\/span>grows increasingly more important as the fallout from the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 continue through 2021.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Does higher educational attainment serve as a \"recession-proofing\" mechanism?<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The dramatic measures taken in response to the Covid-19 pandemic beginning in March 2020 ushered in the third economic recession in the past 20 years in the United States, as classified by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Based on a recent NBER report, the 2020 recession “officially” lasted from February 2020 to April 2020, which makes it the shortest US recession recorded. While this may meet the “technical” definition for recession and expansion, the practical effects of the lockdowns are still being felt in a myriad of ways, from vehicle manufacturers awaiting computer chips for their new cars and trucks to the supply-and-demand complexities associated with lumber costs and availability.<\/span><\/p>\n

BLS Unemployment Data (Monthly)<\/u><\/span><\/b>
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Updated monthly, the BLS tracks unemployment rates for persons 25 years and older by educational attainment in its “The Employment Situation<\/a>” news releases. While the most recent version shows data from July 2001 to July 2021, unemployment by education level has been tracked since 1992. In the first visualization below (BLS Unemployment Data), we have recreated the BLS chart to span the almost 30 years of available data using their four educational levels: “Less Than a High School Diploma”, “High School Graduate, No College”, “Some College or Associate Degree”, and “Bachelor’s or Higher”. Because the data presented are unemployment rates, the best-performing group has the lowest unemployment rate.<\/i><\/b><\/span> Also, the gray segments show the NBER’s officially-designated recessions during the past 30 years in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

Overview of general trends…<\/span><\/p>\n