When the IALS data were used to determine the impacts that literacy skills had on earnings amongst the general population, Green and Riddell (2001) found that literacy had a large impact on earnings, and each additional year of education increased earnings by 8.3%. Contradicting the findings of the above study, the authors suggested that education level—and not work experience—had a greater impact on literacy. They suggested that work experience had little effect on literacy. They also found that literacy skills "seriously impact" how well immigrants adjusted to the labour market, and parents' education level did not impact their children's earnings as adults. The authors emphasized how the combination of literacy and education had the greatest impact on earnings, further supporting the ideas of human capital.

Although Smith (1999) acknowledged that low levels of literacy are directly related to employment and self–sufficiency (e.g., IALS found that people with lower levels of literacy tended to be unemployed for longer periods of time and received lower wages), literacy levels alone cannot be targeted as the only reason these adults were unable to sustain supportive employment without depending on social assistance. She suggested that the labour market and its lack of permanent, full–time jobs that can provide a salary above minimum wage (currently $6.85 in Ontario which equates to $14, 248 per year) played a significant role. The real question is, what has more of an influence on an adult's ability to find a job that can sustain his or her family: the types of jobs available or literacy levels? Most often it is "single parents (mostly women), persons with disabilities, older workers, Aboriginal people, youth, and undereducated workers" (p. 15) who are trapped by a labour market that offers few opportunities that will enable them to support themselves and their families. "Teaching people to read and write won't create jobs that don't exist, make it easier to get by on the minimum wage, or get rid of discrimination" (National Anti–Poverty Organization, 1992).

Supporting the above was a U.S. study that found greater earnings disparities within similar literacy skill groups than between skill groups (Devroye & Freeman, 2001). In other words, workers with the same literacy scores experienced greater wage differences when compared to workers from various score groups. Using the National Adult Literacy Survey data, Raudenbush and Kasim (1998) confirmed findings that the majority of wage disparities were found within occupations and not between them. They suggested that discrimination and occupational segregation may explain earnings differences experienced by women and ethnic minorities in the US.

Clearly, there is more than one way of looking at the relationship between literacy, employment, and earnings. It is not always safe to assume that low literacy levels are the only predictor of lower wages. Compounding the relationship between low literacy and earnings are societal structures such as discrimination, job segregation, and a growing number of low-paying, non-unionized and insecure jobs—all of which had an impact on the participants in this study.