Oh, it does. The schools and banks have just positioned themselves to capture as much of the added value as they can - which might take away a lot of the financial upside, but the difference in unemployment rate is still quite significant.
> but the difference in unemployment rate is still quite significant.
I was expecting significant to mean more than 1.3 percentage points[1] over the entire population of the same age[2], especially given those who have certain difficulties will most likely never attend college, and will struggle in the workplace because of those difficulties (think mental disabilities as an example). Handing a degree on a silver platter to someone in that position isn't really going to help them.
Knowing that such people exist and need to be accounted for, while seeing how close the numbers really are, I'm even less convinced that the market rewards degrees than I was before I read these comments.
Sorry for the lack of clarity, I was referring to the combination of unemployment rate and workforce participation rate (which is 74% with bachelor's degree or higher, 58% with high school only). There's doubtless some confounding factors there, but it shows where the jobs are going. I don't think those inherent difficulties for certain people you mention don't need to be considered separately because the market doesn't care why you didn't attend college - part of what the market is rewarding is, frankly, either not having or being able to overcome inherent difficulties.
How are you establishing causation here? Of course, older generations are far more likely to have only high school, if that. It seems likely that older generations are less likely to be participating in the workforce. I'm not sure if this data includes beyond retirement age, but certainly early retirees would be included in the participation rate.
More interesting would be to narrow our criteria down to ages 25-34 to see how the rise in postsecondary schooling has changed the employment landscape over time. My opinion is that the unemployment rate is on trend[1], and while participation is unfortunately skewed from the 60s to the 90s due to rising of women coming into the workplace, since the 1990s there is little change in participation despite rising rates of postsecondary attainment[2]. If the workplace valued college, shouldn't we see a more obvious change over time corresponding with rising rates of postsecondary attainment?
Oh, it does. The schools and banks have just positioned themselves to capture as much of the added value as they can - which might take away a lot of the financial upside, but the difference in unemployment rate is still quite significant.