Bureau of Labor Statistics: A Flawed Map—But One Everyone Needs to Navigate the Future

When we talk about preparing young people for life after high school, data can be either a compass or a mirage. At Personal Finance Reimagined (PFR), we believe in equipping students with a structured decision-making process—one that includes tools, evidence, and reflection. That is why we both champion and critique the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

For decades, the BLS has been a quiet workhorse of the American economy. Its mission is simple: collect, analyze, and publish vital economic information related to labor markets, prices, and productivity. But its impact is profound. Whether a Federal Reserve economist is evaluating inflation, a hiring manager is comparing wage trends, or a high school student is dreaming of a future career, the BLS is in the background, shaping how decisions get made.

About the author: Jeff Hulett leads Personal Finance Reimagined, a decision-making and financial education platform. He teaches personal finance at James Madison University and provides personal finance seminars. Check out his book -- Making Choices, Making Money: Your Guide to Making Confident Financial Decisions.

Jeff is a career banker, data scientist, behavioral economist, and choice architect. Jeff has held banking and consulting leadership roles at Wells Fargo, Citibank, KPMG, and IBM.

A Proponent’s Perspective: Opportunity Begins with Awareness

For our high school programs, the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook is an invaluable resource. It offers accessible, reliable, and systematically updated data on hundreds of occupations. For every career path, students can view expected job growth, median income, educational requirements, and working conditions. This is not just statistical wallpaper—it is choice architecture in action.

We pair this resource with a unique exercise: a conversation with your "future self." Using decision science frameworks and behavioral tools, students simulate future pathways, guided by real labor market data. Whether their future leads to college, a trade, or entrepreneurship, the BLS enables a grounded, reality-based starting point.

Likewise, the Fastest Growing Occupations report provides an essential signal amid the noise. In an age where students are bombarded by influencer dreams and viral success stories, it offers something more durable: actual demand. Fields like healthcare, data science, green energy, and skilled trades feature prominently—not because they are trendy, but because they reflect structural demographic and technological shifts.

In short, for young adults making long-horizon decisions, the BLS helps break through anecdote and emotion with data-driven direction.

A Critic’s Perspective: Survivorship Bias and the "Education Pays" Trap

But here is where the story becomes more complicated.

The BLS also publishes an influential chart titled "Education Pays," which shows a simple, ascending bar graph of average income by education level. High school graduates earn more than dropouts. Bachelor’s degree holders earn more than high school grads. Those with advanced degrees earn even more. It is tidy, intuitive—and dangerously incomplete.

What the BLS glosses over is the survivorship bias deeply embedded in those numbers. The chart only shows the outcomes of people who survived the process—those who completed their degrees and secured stable employment. It ignores the many who started college but never graduated, who took on debt without earning credentials, or who entered low-demand fields with poor job prospects. It also fails to reflect the long-term impact of student loan repayment, default risk, and underemployment.

Research shows that first-generation college students are especially susceptible to this bias. They are more likely to take on debt without completing a degree, less likely to have familial safety nets, and often face unfamiliar academic systems without the guidance or social capital needed to navigate them. As a result, the financial risks and long-term setbacks they face are disproportionately high—and entirely invisible in the "Education Pays" narrative. By showing only the success stories, the BLS paints an overly optimistic picture—one that resembles marketing more than unbiased analysis.

In effect, the “Education Pays” chart tells only half the story. It frames education as a universal good without adjusting for the cost, debt burden, or employment mismatch that many students experience. This incomplete picture can mislead people into seeing college as the only viable path to economic mobility. And it obscures the value of alternative paths—trades, apprenticeships, or entrepreneurial ventures—that may offer better returns with less risk.

This survivorship bias becomes even more problematic when blended with the availability bias of the student loan system. Easy access to education financing reinforces the illusion of guaranteed returns, while masking the downside risk. Together, they form a cognitive bias cocktail—one part misleading data, one part overconfidence in easy money—that distorts how families and students assess the true cost and value of higher education.

For anyone evaluating the ROI of college, these omissions matter. Gross income is not wealth. And education that leads to debt without direction is not investment—it is speculation.

What Do We Do With Imperfect Data?

So, where does that leave us?

With eyes wide open. The BLS contains both signal and noise—useful insights mixed with oversimplifications and blind spots. One of the most important skills we teach students is how to separate the signal from the noise. Rather than dismiss imperfect data, we help them recognize its value, adjust for its biases, and use it as a foundation for smarter, more informed choices.

Imagine navigating a city with a slightly outdated map. You might miss a new building or a closed road, but you are still better off than wandering aimlessly. That is how we view the BLS. It is a map of the labor market—not the territory itself. And just like any good decision-maker, people must learn to update that map as they go.

Final Thoughts: Better Questions, Better Outcomes

At Personal Finance Reimagined, we are not interested in blind trust or blanket rejection. We are interested in empowered inquiry. The BLS provides an essential foundation for helping people make better, more informed decisions about their future. But like any tool, it must be used with discernment.

We should continue to demand better from our data institutions—more transparency about assumptions, more nuance in how outcomes are reported, and more integration of wealth and risk metrics. But we should also model how to use what we have, and equip students and families not just to follow the data, but to question it intelligently.

After all, education can pay—when it is matched with purpose, planning, and the power to choose well.

Resources for the Curious

Books and Research

• Dale, Stacy, and Alan B. Krueger. “Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4), 2002, pp. 1491–1527.

  Finds that college selectivity has little impact on earnings once student ability is accounted for—challenging simplistic views of ROI in higher ed.

• Krueger, Alan B., and Mikael Lindahl. “Education for Growth: Why and For Whom?” Journal of Economic Literature, 39(4), 2001, pp. 1101–1136.

  Examines heterogeneity in education returns, emphasizing that the payoff depends heavily on context, not just credentials.

• Roese, Neal J. “The Functional Basis of Counterfactual Thinking.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66(5), 1994, pp. 805–818.

  Demonstrates how imagining one’s future self can improve motivation, planning, and goal-directed behavior.

• Survivorship Bias and Risk

  • Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Fooled by Randomness. Random House, 2001.

    Explores how people misinterpret success by only analyzing the visible winners, ignoring the many who failed along the way.

From Jeff Hulett | Personal Finance Reimagined

• Book:

  • Hulett, Jeff. Making Choices, Making Money: Your Guide to Confident Financial Decisions. PFR Press, 2023.

    Introduces a lifelong framework for financial and career decision-making using behavioral economics and choice architecture.

• Articles:

  • “Achieving College ROI: How to Evaluate Community College and Traditional College Pathways”

    Provides a framework to compare education options using opportunity cost, market data, and decision tools.

  • “Why College Can Be High Risk—and How to Decide with Confidence”

    Explores hidden risks in college decisions and introduces tools like the “Education Premortem” to assess fit and potential downside.

  • “A Lifelong Approach to Job Decisions and Being the Best Version of You”

    Outlines how to use neuroscience and structured decision-making to align career paths with motivation and economic return.