The Washington Post website runs a regular column it calls the “Department of Data.” This week the department explored two interesting topics related to education and the workplace.
One looked at the highest-paying jobs for college dropouts, which reporter Andrew Van Dam noted accounts for 14.5% of the American work force.
Inflation-adjusted Labor Department data for 2019 to 2022 says that people 25 and older who did not finish college are paid an average of $27.90 per hour. That is a surprisingly high number, so keep in mind that Mississippi’s generally lower pay scales probably means the average rate of pay in this state is lower.
There are plenty of occupations where people in that “some college” category can earn a good living. Mining, which includes the oil industry; and petroleum and coal products manufacturing both paid more than $40 an hour, on average. A chart with the story listed another 13 occupations, from electronic product manufacturing to real estate, where the average pay is more than $30 per hour.
People with a college degree do earn more, but the obvious lesson from these figures is that leaving college before graduating does not prevent somebody from making a good living.
Average pay is lower for people who don’t finish high school. But once again, Bureau of Labor Statistics data says this group of dropouts also can do well. Another chart listed 15 fields where the average pay for high school dropouts is $21 to $27 per hour.
The second topic was just as informative: How many education majors are no longer working in that field? The short answer is, quite a few, and the percentage has been rising for a decade.
In 2020, the Census Bureau reported that 31.5% of education majors were working outside that field. It was a big jump from the prior year figure of 29.6%, and the increase may have been affected by the covid-19 pandemic.
An interesting subset of information looks at which teachers stick with education. Administrators are most likely to stay, having advanced to higher pay levels. But more than 70% of education majors who are special-needs teachers, counselors and math teachers also are working in school at age 26. On the bottom end, only 56% of history majors stay in education, as do only 48% of physical education majors.
Also interesting: “Lower-income states tend to retain teachers better than their high-income peers,” the story said. “Mississippi has the highest share of education majors who stick with the profession during their prime teaching years at 78%, followed by West Virginia, Louisiana and Arkansas.”
Mississippi is among 20 states, including Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia, where more than 70% of education majors have remained in the profession during their “prime teaching years” of age 25 to 55. For all the frustrations teachers must endure, that’s an impressive number — hopefully worth a Department of Data story one day.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
