Your Earnings: Education vs. Experience

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' 2004 Annual Report (available online as a 3.5MB PDF document) contained salary data for a variety of occupations according to their required level of education requirement (whether they required a college degree or not) and their experience level (where skilled = high, inexperienced = low or entry-level, unskilled = doesn't matter) for 2004, which Political Calculations' provides in the dynamic table below. You may click upon the column heads to rank the data from either highest-to-lowest or lowest-to-highest.

2004 Salaries - Degree vs. Experienced Non-Degree Occupations

Skill Level/ Degree	Degree/ Occupation	Salary
Inexperienced, Degree	Accounting	41058
Skilled, Non-Degree	Air Traffic Controller	95272
Inexperienced, Degree	Chemical Engineering	52539
Inexperienced, Degree	Computer Science	49036
Skilled, Non-Degree	Dental Hygienists	59785
Skilled, Non-Degree	Elevator Repairers	57077
Inexperienced, Degree	English	31113
Inexperienced, Degree	History	30344
Unskilled, Non-Degree	Janitor	20763
Inexperienced, Degree	Journalism	26758
Inexperienced, Degree	Nursing	38920
Unskilled, Non-Degree	Parking Lot Attendant	18055
Inexperienced, Degree	Pharmacy	78593
Inexperienced, Degree	Psychology	28230
Skilled, Non-Degree	Real Estate Brokers	71444
Unskilled, Non-Degree	Sewing Maching Operator	19373
All	U.S. 2004 Average	36999

It's interesting to see that even within the groupings for both degree and non-degree occupations, education is a differentiating factor in determining an individual's income. For the non-degree occupations, the higher level of education is reflected in the form of the specialized skills an individual acquires through experience or training, as you would expect in the case of an air traffic controller compared to a parking lot attendant.

Likewise, the higher level of education required to gain the entry-level skills of an engineer or pharmacist command much more income than those degrees whose graduates do not require the same level of specialized knowledge. Think about it - you could teach a pharmacist to be a journalist and you would likely have them up to speed at the occupation in less than a year. If you tried the reverse however, it would certainly be unlikely that the journalist seeking to become a pharmacist would be anywhere near ready to work behind the counter filling prescriptions at Walgreens in the same amount of time. This difference in specialization accounts for the substantial difference in starting salary between the two occupations. Adam Smith's "division of labour" marches on!