On Labor Day, Bush Puts Emphasis on Education

President Bush traveled to a job training center Monday to deliver a Labor Day plea to workers to keep their skills up to date if they want to remain productive members of society -- a message more questionable than it might sound.

“If you keep getting a good education, it increases your standard of living but also helps this country remain strong economically,” Bush told members of the Seafarers International Union at the Paul Hall Center for Maritime Training and Education in Piney Point, Md.

But according to the White House Council of Economic Advisors, education is not the ticket to a higher salary that it used to be.

The White House panel found that the inflation-adjusted earnings of people with bachelor’s degrees fell by 5.2% from 2000 to 2004. During the same period, the earnings of people with just high school degrees rose slightly.

There was still a considerable earnings gap between the two groups.

In 2004, college graduates earned 80% more than high school graduates. But four years earlier, they earned 93% more.

A recent report by the liberal Economic Policy Institute, which looked at earnings after inflation in 2000 and 2005, found a wage gain of 0.3% for both college graduates and high school graduates.

The training center that Bush toured Monday does not give out degrees, but the president said it was doing something just as important: preparing its students for the jobs of the future.

“As the world constantly changes, we better make sure that our workforce has the skills necessary to compete if we want to be the world’s leading economy,” he said.

Bush also took the occasion, as he almost always does when addressing the economy, of urging Congress to make permanent the temporary tax cuts enacted during his first term.

He also promoted policies that would make the United States independent of foreign oil, and he touted trade policies that would make it easier for U.S. companies to sell goods and services abroad.

“I believe this country can compete with anybody, anytime, anywhere,” he said, “as long as the rules are fair.”

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joel.havemann@latimes.com