See NJ’s Rank In New Education Report By State

NEW JERSEY — The Garden State is one of the most educated in the nation. And that knowledge could help New Jersey residents through tough times, according to a new report from WalletHub.

The data-analysis website ranked New Jersey sixth-most educated state on its list of "2023's Most & Least Educated States in America," released Monday. The state has one of the highest rates of bachelor's degree holders, the seventh-highest percentage of graduate- or professional-degree holders and the nation's smallest gender gap in educational attainment, according to WalletHub.

The report comes on the heels of federal data, released in September, showing lower unemployment rates for those with higher education levels. In 2021, the national unemployment rate was only 1.5 percent for doctoral-degree holders, while totaling 8.3 percent for people with less than a high school diploma, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

New Jersey's high level of education could help the state endure tough economic times. And that may become especially useful in 2023 amid inflation and a projected economic slowdown in the U.S.

Granted, education alone won't carry states through economic shocks, according to several of WalletHub's experts.

"Simply increasing the percentage of educational attainment level in a region would not necessarily lead to better economic outcomes such as a region’s ability to withstand economic shocks," said Dr. Ahlam Lee, associate professor at Xavier University's School of Psychology. "Rather than education attainment level per se, the extent to which a region has people with cognitive skills for problem-solving and creativity would be more associated with such economic outcomes."

But New Jersey still has significant educational disparities, experts and advocates say. A significant portion of school funding comes from local property taxes, and New Jersey's racial wealth gap remains substantial.

The median household wealth of white families in New Jersey is $322,500, compared to just $17,700 for Black families and $26,100 for Latino families, according to a report from the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice released in February 2022.

• Read more: Racial Gaps Still Plague NJ, Advocates Say

The disparities have impacted school funding and educational outcomes, New Jersey Policy Perspective wrote in September 2021.

"It is no accident that New Jersey’s Black and Hispanic/Latinx students are enrolled in school districts with lower tax capacity: racist practices such as 'redlining' and 'block busting' have created segregated communities with artificially lower property values," NJPP's Bruce Baker and Mark Weber wrote. "These practices cannot be simply dismissed as sins of the past: the generational wealth taken from the residents of these communities has profound effects on school funding today."

But overall, New Jersey shows high levels of educational attainment, according to U.S. Census data from 2021:

• 43.1 percent of adults 25 and older earned a bachelor's degree or higher (fifth in the nation)
• 17.4 percent have an advanced degree (eighth)

The most educated state is Massachusetts, while West Virginia ranks last, according to WalletHub.

See WalletHub's full list and methodology.