Since 2019, although now the gap is higher than ever (1.4%).

College doesn’t prepare you for work as effectively as work, but it also teaches interesting things and prepares for academia (graduate school).

Isn't getting a college degree actually making you more selective, too, leading graduates to pass on jobs they would otherwise have taken?

> The comparison is worth pinning down. "All workers" is the whole U.S. labor force, and most of them are older and more experienced than a new graduate, so a fresh grad starts at a natural disadvantage. For decades the degree more than canceled that disadvantage out. Now it does not.

> New grads have not fallen behind their peers who skipped college, either. Young workers without a degree sit at 7.2% unemployment, well above the grads' 5.6%. A degree still beats no degree. What it no longer does is beat the average.

Outside of medicine and law, a non-CS engineering degree, preferably also a masters, remains a good pathway to a reasonable non-parasitic job, although relocation may be required.

Are there people who think college education is a shortcut to generic employment? This seems like a very misleading statistic. Average earnings (including those unemployed), etc might be better. Telling me that it’s harder to get a professional job that I’m qualified for than it is to walk up to a McDonald’s or whatever and get a job is not shocking.