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Mass. Becomes 1st State To Have Half Its Labor Force Hold Bachelor's Degrees
A new report finds that half of all workers in Massachusetts held a bachelor's degree or higher in 2016, marking the first time any U.S. state has reached that threshold.
The same analysis by the independent Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center shows that college-educated workers on average earn 99 percent — basically double — the wages of those in the labor force with only a high school education.
That's a big increase from a few decades ago. In 1979, MassBudget says, the median wage for a Massachusetts worker with a bachelor's degree was about 50 percent higher than the earnings of someone who hadn't attended college.
![(Courtesy Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center)](https://media.wbur.org/wp/2017/08/image1.png)
The report released Wednesday cites data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey.
In Massachusetts, 50.2 percent of individuals participating in the state's labor force — meaning they're working or actively searching for work — had attained bachelor's degrees or higher in 2016.
That's up from 20 percent of the state labor force in 1979.
![(Courtesy Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center)](https://media.wbur.org/wp/2017/08/0823_labor-force.jpg)
The next highest state was New Jersey at 45.2 percent, followed by New York, Maryland and Connecticut.
New Jersey and Massachusetts have the highest median wages in the nation, at $21.35 and $21.22 an hour, respectively.
With reporting by The Associated Press and WBUR's Benjamin Swasey
This article was originally published on August 23, 2017.