More evidence that education and earnings are linked in the United States: People with a high school degree made more money than the national median of $62,843 in only one of the nation’s 3,142 counties in 2019, according to a Social Explorer analysis of 2015-19 American Community Survey data. The median earnings for a household headed by a high school graduate was $75,491 in Daggett County, Utah, a sparsely populated county on the Colorado-Wyoming-Utah border.

In general, high school graduates fared best in counties where extractive industries were concentrated, such as North Slope Borough, Alaska ($61,667); Eureka County, Nev. ($54,646); and Yoakum County, Texas ($54,400). In the nation’s highest-earning county – Falls Church City, Va. – high school graduates earned a median of $28,160, barely one-third of the county’s $84,000 median for all households.

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Median Earnings for High School Gradutes, 2019. Click here to explore further.

Author: Frank Bass