Dropouts Costing Wages and Taxes

Dropouts Costing Wages


I fixed my hyperlinking, finally....

This article talks about how costly it is for kids to dropout of high school. They have realized the value of the 2008 dropouts, which was just under 600,000 nationwide to be about $4.1 billion in lost wages and over $500 million in lost property, federal, and state taxes. This is an insane amount! Earlier in the blog I discussed about dropout rates and how much it can cost the state over the life of the person. This is a much larger deal. We all know that dropouts earn less than high school graduates and earn at least less than half that of a college graduate. However, if these guys had stayed in school and only graduated high school, hundreds of millions of dollars would have been generated in wages and taxes. This would help strengthen the economy despite the high unemployment rate. The employment market is turning into a bunch of unskilled labor because so many jobs go unfilled because of lack of qualified hires. There are jobs where the base salary is above 70K a year but no one qualified applies because everyone qualified already has a job. We think that dropping out only costs the student, but in fact it can have huge impacts on our communities, local and federal governments, and the economy. The dropouts are USUALLY never successful beyond creating trouble in and around their home cities. There are many who go back to school or make a life change, but those are fewer than the ones who drop out and do anything good. I know many high school and college dropouts from my high school class and they struggle on a daily basis. They have no career and are working a $8.50/hr job. Not that that is bad, earning money and working a job is important, but when a person is so creative and energetic and they waste it away because they want to party or are too lazy to do the work, it is not right. Most of my friends that graduated with me are working a rough 9 to 5 and can't get a break. I am happy where I am and know I can make a career out of teaching. However, back to the point of dropouts, it is never a good thing. People take for granted the opportunities an education can afford you. All I know is the less school I have the longer I will work. I would like to retire after 30 years of service and not have to put in 45 because I made the right decision to stay in school and go as far as I possibly could to earn the most amount of money.