Employers will hire people because they think that the people can earn money for the company. If you have good skills, then they will be more likely to pay you well. If you don't have much in the way of skills, they will pay minimum wage.
College will teach you some skills, or you can go to a trade school (beautician, electrician, etc.) to learn some skills. Otherwise, you're pretty much stuck with flipping burgers and asking if you'd like fries with that. You have to give a company a reason to hire you and pay you decent money.
"Descent", by the way, means "to go down".
