Unfortunately, these were not reported in the original financial aid forms, so it was impossible to measure reduction in these services. The Employment Securities Division maintains records of earnings and hours for all individuals employed in covered industries in the state of Washington. The average welfare graduate earned a fairly high hourly wage. The average wage was calculated for each individual by dividing total earnings by number of hours. When earnings for more than one job were reported, the job with the highest number of hours was used, which was not always the highest hourly wage.
Wages appear to increase significantly the longer the graduates are out of school.
The most frequent major was social work, which accounted for 15 percent of all graduates. Many of the graduates found employment in school districts, health service offices, social service agencies, private businesses, and state and local governments. A small subset of the graduates during the two-year period received a master's degree. The remaining 172 graduates received a bachelor's degree. I n summary, most welfare graduates have demonstrated considerable success in earning sufficiently high wages to work their way out of AFDC dependency.