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1 1 (January 23, 2008)

handle is hein.crs/crsajsc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Order Code RS22792 January 23, 2008 Education Matters: Earnings and Employment Outcomes by Educational Attainment Linda Levine Specialist in Labor Economics Domestic Social Policy Division Summary The amount of education in which individuals invest greatly influences their labor market outcomes. For example, highly educated workers on average are better paid than other workers. Four-year college graduates also are less at risk of unemployment; if they should lose their jobs, these displaced workers are more likely than others to find new jobs. The importance of educational attainment to earnings levels has grown over time as well. Concern about the extent of wage inequality in U.S. society arose in part because of the comparatively large increases in real (inflation-adjusted) earnings of workers with at least a bachelor's degree. The benefits of greater educational attainment that accrue to individuals are both monetary (e.g., higher earnings) and nonmonetary (e.g., better health). The benefits of additional years of schooling extend beyond individuals and their families. These societal benefits also are of a pecuniary (e.g., greater economic growth) and nonpecuniary (e.g., increased civic involvement) nature. Partly because of the spillover of benefits from individuals to society, Congress has enacted measures to encourage more of the nation's population to enroll in postsecondary educational institutions (e.g., Pell Grants, education tax provisions). This report focuses specifically on differences over time in selected labor market outcomes of individuals associated with their educational attainment.' Earnings Workers with more education historically have had higher annual earnings on average than workers with less education. In 2006, the latest year for which data are available, a worker with a bachelor's degree earned almost three times more than a worker who had not graduated from high school ($56,788 and $20,873, respectively). As also 1 For information on societal benefits, see CRS Report RL33238, The Benefits of Education, by Linda Levine.

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