Better math skills boost salary by $21,000 a year; A high school diploma is equivalent to a $7,000 jump in annual salary

Aug. 4, 2020 WASHINGTON – Improved math skills would raise the salary of workers by tens of thousands of dollars a year and would help the country rebound from a deepening COVID-19 economic freefall, according to research in a new white paper from The Learning Agency. The major findings of The Learning Agency’s white paper are:

• Better high school math skills could increase worker incomes by $21,000 per year
• Improved reading and writing skills could result in an $11,000 increase in pay annually
• Graduating with a high school diploma nets a worker an additional $7,000 in annual earnings

As the U.S. economy continues to retract–second quarter GDP fell 9.5 percent–and with states and local governments looking to cut education budgets, the white paper argues that increased learning would have a dual effect: It would boost earnings for workers while increasing tax collections by trillions of dollars. “Education is one of the best strategies for recovering from an economic downturn,” said Ulrich Boser, founder of The Learning Agency and the paper’s author. “Now is the time for governments to increase spending on things like tutoring, not making deep cuts to services.” To better understand the benefits of improved learning from critical thinking to metacognition, The Learning Agency conducted a study to look at how Americans’ incomes would grow as a result of better skills and education. The white paper drew from a 2015 National Bureau of Economic Research study that demonstrated workers could expect impressive increases in salary. Read the full white paper “Education and Income: How Learning Leads to Better Salaries.”

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The Learning Agency is a Washington, DC-based education organization. Our mission is to help individuals and organizations harness the power of learning to solve problems. For more information, visit https://thelearningage.wpengine.com/