Jobs That Pay Without a B.A.: The Most Lucrative Fields in Washington State

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Want to make good money without earning a four-year college degree? Consider becoming a dental hygienist, diagnostic ultrasound technician, registered nurse or respiratory-therapy technician.

Those are a few of the jobs with salaries that hit $50,000 or more a year just a year out of a training program at a community or technical college.

These numbers — produced by the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) — dovetail with the findings from a recent report by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, which concludes that blue-collar jobs that pay a good wage continue to be on the decline across the country, but skilled-services jobs that pay well are on the rise.

And while those skilled-service jobs don’t require a four-year college degree, applicants typically need some education beyond high school, such as an associate or technical degree or certificate from a community college.

In its report, “Good Jobs that Pay without a BA,” Georgetown calculates that there are 30 million jobs in the United States today that provide median earnings of $55,000 annually for people without a bachelor’s degree. (For the purpose of this report, Georgetown defines a “good job” as one that pays a median earnings of $55,000 a year, and a minimum of $35,000 a year.)

The report also estimates that 62 percent of Washington workers don’t have a bachelor’s degree. Of those workers, only 42 percent have a job that pays a good wage.

Georgetown identified five industries in Washington that have had the greatest growth in “good jobs” since 1991: leisure and hospitality and personal services, health-care services, financial consulting/business services, education services and government services.

But let’s get more specific.

The state community-college board collects data on what its students are paid a year after they graduate from one of its colleges’ professional and technical programs and certificates. (Professional and technical programs prepare students for the workforce, and are not the same as academic transfer programs, which get students ready to transfer to a four-year college and earn a bachelor’s degree.)



The report has some limitations; for example, the board knows its graduates’ fields of study and their year-after-graduation pay, but it doesn’t know if the graduate actually took a job in the specific field in which they studied. Still, the report is a pretty good indicator, and the numbers align well with the Georgetown University study. It’s also current, measuring how much students who graduated in 2013-14 were making in 2015-16.

Graduates who go into health care earn some of the top salaries. The highest-paid field of study in Washington is dental hygienist. The median salary in that field is $42 an hour. Nursing — no surprise here — is a top field, too, with the state’s 1,533 nursing graduates from 2013-14 making a median wage of $31.66 an hour. The midpoint salary for professionals in diagnostic medical ultrasound is $34.32 an hour.

Some programs that graduate fewer than 50 students a year — including cardiovascular technology, fire science and water quality/wastewater management — also pay very high wages.

One caveat: Some of the highest-paying fields of study are also difficult to get into because there’s so much competition among students. For example, a student applying to get into a community-college nursing program will need top grades in prerequisite courses, said Darby Kaikkonen, policy-research director for the community and technical college board.

Early childhood education is the lowest-paying field in Washington, offering a median salary of just $13.61 an hour, or median annual salary of $21,940 for the 525 students who graduated with that degree.

That’s a reflection of how little value is placed on teaching young children, said Laura McDowell, spokeswoman for the colleges. But because it’s also a popular field, the colleges are designing “stackable” certificates — certificates that build on each other and lead to an associate degree, which then can lead to an applied bachelor’s degree, which can lead to a higher salary. Highline College offers such a program.

Between 1991 and 2015, the number of blue-collars jobs did go up in Washington state — no doubt some of them in the construction industry, one of the most lucrative fields for people without a bachelor’s in fast-growing Seattle.

But the state added even more good jobs for people who worked in skilled services — 93,000 jobs in all, according to the Georgetown analysis.