When I graduated high school about 80% of my graduating class went to college of some sort. I thought it would be interesting to look at my friends now and see how their education level was and what kind of job they were in.
Note: This is totally unscientific and it isn't safe to conclude anything based on it. I'm doing this more for idle interest sake than anything.
I'm looking at a sample of 37 total people. I know the education level for those 37 people but I don't know the current job level for all of them.
78% of my friends have a 4 year college degree or more. 19% of my friends have graduate degrees.
My friends have various jobs. The jobs that my friends have are listed below in groups based on their eduction levels:
High school diploma: construction supervisor, supermarket employee, bartender, waitress, auto shop manager
Associates or some college: retail clerk, secretary
Bachelors degrees are : 5 engineers, 3 IT workers, 2 managers, accountant, respiratory therapist, account executive (salesperson?), retail clerk, artist, realtor and 2 are currently unemployed
Masters degrees: 2 engineers, planner, counselor and one unemployed
The Doctorates are : 1 engineer and 1 professor
You see that 3 of my friends are unemployed. Out of the total 37 that means that my friends have a 8.1% unemployment rate.
I don't know what everyone makes for their salary of course. But I can make some generalizations and put different jobs into different general bins. Engineers, managers, professors, etc are in higher compensated fields. Retail clerks and bartenders are making little more than minimum wage. I'm going to make an assumption and put each job into high, medium and low wage levels based on my perception of the profession in question.
Heres how my estimation of the different compensation level by education comes out:
High school diploma: 17% high, 17% med, 66% low,
Bachelors degrees are : 50% high, 22% med, 17% low and 11% are currently unemployed
Masters degrees: 60% high, 0% medium, 20% low, 20% unemployed
The Doctorates are : 100% high
My friends with less than 4 year degrees are mostly in low compensated jobs. Most of my friends with 4 year degrees are in highly compensated jobs. All of my friends (both of them) with doctorates have high paying jobs.
Almost all of my friends are 35-45 years old. You'll notice that there are a lot of engineers in the list, that is a reflection of me being an engineer and the fact that I know several engineers.