What is the average salary with a ged

For each level of education that an individual achieves after high school, this earning potential increases. This group of students has an average unemployment rate of 3. While these individuals enjoy higher pay and lower unemployment compared to those with only a high school diploma and no college experience, they are unable to realize the benefits associated with earning a degree. A degree completion program , for example, is a college program specifically designed for individuals who have started and not finished their degrees.

These programs accept as many previously earned credits as possible so that students can graduate more quickly than if they were to start over entirely. It may also be possible to earn credit for your prior work experience , further accelerating your degree completion. In keeping with the economic trend, their risk of unemployment also decreases compared to those with less education, to 2. Their unemployment rate is 2. Average Unemployment Rate, Professional Degree: 1.

The problem for many people in the some-college-no-degree category is that they have student debt from their college days but lack the degree that would bump them into a higher earning category that could help them get out of debt.

The unemployment rate in this category is 3. The unemployment rate for holders of professional degrees is the lowest on our list, at 1. You might think that Americans with a doctorate would earn more than those with a professional degree, but in fact they earn less. The unemployment rate for Americans with doctorates is 1.

Even people with high salaries may live beyond their means and end up with less retirement income than they need to be comfortable. Moreover, not only is the pay gap widening; it's accelerating. This outcome, although exacerbated by racial and gender inequalities, exists even when the institutional advantages of white male workers are factored in. USA Today, relying on studies by Sentier Analytics, noted that incomes of middle-aged white males with high-school degrees fell by 9 percent in the period to, while incomes for middle-aged white males with college degrees rose by 23 percent.

A Pew Research Center report summarized in U. News confirms this widening education-based income gap. A college education is not cheap. One inescapable conclusion of the high cost of a college education and the diminishing incomes of high-school graduates in comparison with college graduates is that many high-school educated, lower-income families will have children who will not go to college and who therefore will also have low incomes.

The possible persistence of intergenerational low incomes counters a long-held belief in America as "the land of opportunity," but is confirmed by a report by the bipartisan and moderate Economic Policy Institute, which found that economic immobility in the U.