Since 2004, the devolved education systems of England, Scotland and Wales have introduced initiatives to increase contact between employers and young people, particularly aged 14-19, as a supplementary, co-curricular activity within mainstream education. The initiatives are motivated partly to increase wage-earning potential but studies to date have not explicitly tested this hypothesis. Robust evaluations from the USA suggest a potential wage uplift of 6.5-25% but these evaluations do not directly comment on the UK approach, as they focus on highly specialised forms of education with closely integrated employer involvement. A new 2011 survey associates wage returns and school-mediated employer contacts for 169 full-time 19-24-year-old workers on annual salaries within the UK environment--and suggests a link of 4.5% between each additional school-mediated employer contact, such that four employer contacts would produce results in line with the US studies. Contrasting the US and UK studies suggests that any causal link from school-mediated employer contact to wage outcomes is likely to be driven more by increased social capital as witnessed in improved access to non-redundant, trustworthy information and social network development than by the development of either technical or "employability" skills.