What percentile is your education level?

On the earnings data, yes, even though it's become common. With 40.1% of American women and 37.1% of men now holding at least a bachelor's (CPS 2024), the degree no longer marks you out, yet the lifetime earnings gap over a high school graduate is still put at $900,000 to $1.2 million. How much of that you actually see depends on what you studied, where, and how much you borrowed to do it.

Yes, in both countries. In the US, 40.1% of women hold a bachelor's or higher against 37.1% of men (CPS 2024), and in the UK women are ahead at Levels 2, 3 and 4 and above (LFS Q4 2024). The lead has built over the last twenty years as more women than men went to university, and among Americans aged 25 to 39 it's now about 8.6 percentage points at bachelor's level, 47.1% against 38.5%.

In CPS 2024, 12.5% of women and 10.1% of men aged 25 and over have a master's as their highest qualification. Add professional degrees such as the JD and MD and doctorates, and about 15.7% of women and 14.1% of men hold something postgraduate. Twenty years ago those figures were far lower; the master's became the default next step in business, teaching, healthcare and public administration, and the numbers followed.

Between April and June 2026, an estimated 981,000 people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were not in education, employment or training, 13.0% of the age group (13.7% of young men, 12.3% of young women), according to the ONS release of 27 August 2026. That's 30,000 more than a year earlier. Economists watch the figure closely because a long spell outside work and study at that age tends to show up in lower earnings for decades afterwards.

Yes, and consistently in both countries. American full-time workers with a bachelor's earned about 63% more than high school graduates in 2025, and a master's added roughly 19% again. The spread around that average is wide: engineering, computer science and nursing degrees earn well above the arts and humanities on pay alone, although when researchers ask graduates how satisfied they are with their careers, the ranking doesn't hold.

About half of working-age adults aged 19 to 64 hold a Level 4 qualification or above, which covers foundation degrees, HNDs and full degrees, according to the ONS Labour Force Survey for Q4 2024. In 1992 only about 17% of people were graduates on the ONS's older measure. The jump came with the expansion of higher education after the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 turned the polytechnics into universities.

Because the odds of getting a degree depended on when you were born. About 42.8% of Americans aged 25 to 39 hold a bachelor's or higher, having grown up while universities were expanding, against about 34.2% of those 55 and over, who faced fewer places and a job market that didn't demand one. A degree is therefore rarer among older people, and an older graduate sits at a higher percentile within her own age group than a younger graduate does within his. Compare yourself with everyone and that difference disappears.

About 8.0% of women and 9.1% of men aged 25 and over have no high school diploma in CPS 2024, 8.5% of all adults, and that figure already counts people who reached 9th to 12th grade without finishing. Thirty years ago it was much higher. Completion has improved across every group, though it still lags in some Hispanic and Native American communities.

It depends almost entirely on the subject. An associate's degree earned about 17% more than a high school diploma in the US in 2025 and well under a bachelor's on average, and 11.6% of women and 10.2% of men hold one as their highest qualification (CPS 2024). In nursing, dental hygiene, radiography and several technical trades the two-year degree pays back quickly relative to what it costs. An associate's in liberal arts or general studies tells an employer very little, and the earnings show it.

The US and UK both sit above the OECD average for tertiary attainment among adults aged 25 to 64, at about 52% and 55% in the OECD's 2025 figures against an OECD average of about 42%, while South Korea leads for younger adults aged 25 to 34 at 71%. Germany looks low on the same table, and that's a definitions problem rather than an education problem: its Ausbildung apprenticeship system doesn't count as tertiary under the OECD's rules even though it produces similar jobs and pay. League tables of degree percentages flatter countries that route everyone through a university and penalise countries that don't.

On average yes, but the average is doing a lot of work. The link between qualifications and job quality is strong at the ends, no qualifications against a postgraduate degree, and much noisier in the middle. About 52% of graduates are in a job that doesn't need a degree a year after graduating (Strada Institute, 2024). And it sticks, since 73% of those who start underemployed still are ten years later, with the highest rates in marketing and public safety.