Leadership1 publisher2 min readPublished
Census medians put Wyoming's bachelor's premium at less than half of North Carolina's
Census data analyzed by Business Insider puts the bachelor's premium over some college at $9,874 in Wyoming and $20,696 in North Carolina. A single national benchmark of $18,539 misprices a degree requirement in both states.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- Across states, bachelor's holders earn an average 38.6% more than that group, a gap of about $18,539 a year.
- Among the fourteen lowest-ranked states, some-college medians span $3,760, from $41,732 in last-place Arkansas to $45,492 in 37th-place Tennessee.
- In Wyoming, ranked 43rd, high school graduates have a median of $46,543, above the $44,339 median for adults with some college.
Compiled by The Board RoomSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- cost A Wyoming employer that budgets the national $18,539 gap for a degree requirement is paying about $8,665 a head more than the local median difference.
- decision North Carolina's local gap runs about $2,157 above the national figure, so the case for dropping a degree requirement there is stronger than the national benchmark implies.
- constraint Because the figures are all-occupation medians with no cost-of-living adjustment, they can flag which states' degree rules to revisit but cannot by themselves set a pay band for a specific role.
At the bottom of Business Insider's state ranking, the degree premium varies much more than no-degree pay does. In North Carolina, 42nd, the median bachelor's holder earns $65,170 against $44,474 for adults with some college or an associate degree [7]. In Wyoming, 43rd, the comparison is $54,213 against $44,339 [6]. The two states' premiums differ by $10,822 [4]. That is almost three times the entire spread in some-college medians across the fourteen lowest-ranked states [5].
Wyoming also runs against Business Insider's broader finding that higher levels of education were largely associated with higher median earnings [9]. Its high school median is higher than the some-college median in every one of the fourteen states [7]. An associate-degree or some-college floor for a Wyoming job screens out the local group with the higher median pay [6].
These are medians across every adult 25 and older [1], so they describe a state's labor market as a whole. The ranking does not adjust for cost of living [3]. Business Insider notes that states with large professional labor markets are often among the most expensive [10]. The state figures cited here run only from 50th to 37th place, so they cannot show whether no-degree pay spreads out further up the table.
I think the state table is useful for one decision this quarter: which states' degree requirements deserve a review. The trade-off is between one national rule that is simple to administer and state rules that follow what the credential costs locally. Whichever benchmark goes into that review becomes next quarter's pay band. The national average premium of 38.6% [2] sits between roughly 47% in North Carolina [12] and 22% in Wyoming [11].
What to watch
- The upper end of the same Census ranking, which would show whether no-degree medians spread well beyond the $3,760 range seen among the fourteen lowest states.
- A cost-of-living-adjusted version of the state comparison, which could shrink or widen the North Carolina and Wyoming premiums.
- Occupation-level Census earnings for roles where employers are reviewing degree requirements, to test whether state-wide medians hold for a single job.