Only ten percent of the jobs in the US pay $30-$40 per hour.

I don’t believe many parents start out with the question,

“How can my little Johnny make $35/hour.”

They just assume that sending their kid to college will put him on the road to financial prosperity. They couldn’t be more wrong.

To get into THE TEN PERCENT by leveraging the skills gained with a college education, your student has to be really, really “book smart,” and highly motivated. The competition is fierce, and most of the high school grads chasing college degrees these days don’t come close. Forty-three percent who graduate end up underemployed, many in the 62% cohort, making $10-$20 per hour, or less. (I’m not going to get into the student loan debt issue here.)

However, specific, marketable technical skills can get your high school graduate into the “ten percent,” and there isn’t a lot of competition because Millennials don’t like to get their hands dirty.

Which brings us to Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame.

I’m a big fan, but I don’t think his list of “dirty jobs” looks much like mine—the jobs in my list aren’t all that dirty.

My favorite, Ophthalmic Medical Technologist, pays $71K. Where I live, a high school graduate can get an entry level job and work her way up through a series of certifications. She will get paid to learn in an airconditioned office. The employer has trouble filling these positions. I’m guessing the young people who might fit the bill are all in college, majoring in something like Puppeteering.

I spent two minutes with Google adding to my Ten Percent “not-so-dirty jobs” list:

Web Developer $66,000
Respiratory Specialist $60,000
Dental Hygienist $73,000
Nuclear Medical Technician $74,000
Air Traffic Controller $84,000
MRI Technologist $68,000
Police Officer $64,000
Elevator Technician $74,000
Radiation Therapist $80,000

Sound Engineer Technician $62,000
Diagnostic Medical Sonographer $70,000

The path to most of the other jobs on my list is an inexpensive associate’s degree from a community college or a CTE center.

The medical field is rich in well-paying technical positions.

The right military MOS can translate into a well-paying civilian job.

However, as a society we “crossed a bridge” some time ago. College has been established as the norm—a rite of passage.

“Not going to college” has been stigmatized in segments of our society.

College is “cool.” It doesn’t matter whether or not Little Joanie is all that “book smart,” by golly, she’s going to college. If she has to become an “indentured servant,” so be it.

The high schools are of no help. They have gutted their vocational training programs. Many high schools don’t even acknowledge the existence of these vocational opportunities because they are so busy channeling their students into four-year colleges to meet government imposed “college readiness” standards that make absolutely no sense.

Notes

The median hourly salary for a recent (2015) college grad was $21.50—BLS.

There are different opportunities in different parts of the country. For example, there are some great technical jobs in the oil and gas field in the Gulf.

The Million Dollar Myth

Everybody likes to quote those raw BLS income numbers:
“Graduate from college and your average income will be a million dollars higher than the average high school grad.”
Averages can be very deceptive. If you aren’t careful, you can drown in water an average of six inches deep.
The salary numbers are heavily skewed. Eighty-three percent only make between $10–$30 an hour or less. A whole lot of those people have a college degree.
Only seventeen percent make $30 an hour or better—a relatively small number of folks are making the “big bucks,” and some of them are making really big bucks. That distorts the averages.