As you might expect, there is a big income difference between those with college degrees and those with none. But there’s been a shift lately. For Bloomberg Businessweek, Dorothy Gambrell and Marie Patino show the breakdowns by age, generation, and race.
In 2023, the last year for which data is available, 25- to 34-year-olds with a bachelor’s degree earned exactly 200%—or twice as much—as people from the same cohort without one did. That’s a nice chunk of change, sure, but as more of the population earns a degree, that premium is getting smaller. In 1960 young adults with a degree saw the premium in their earning power peak at 237%.
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