[OC] The median real annual earnings of men without a college degree have declined by 5% since 2000

Posted by AmericaGreatness1776

9 comments

  2. There are a lot of openings in the trades.  Are the trades paying?

  3. Not sure about US, but in Poland many of these are starting job on their own earning sick money from plumbing or similar.

  4. FWIW there’s probably something of a compositional effect going here, i.e. entrepreneurial, ambitious types in 2025 are probably more likely to have a college degree than in 2000. This can be true in addition with the fact that it has genuinely gotten harder for men with only a high school diploma to get jobs, of course.

    It’d be cool to find some kind of (imperfect) proxy for the above. Maybe two charts breaking down into three subgroups: 1) people who got accepted into higher ed but chose not attend, 2) people who never applied to higher ed, 3) people who only got rejected from higher ed (maybe combine (2) and (3)). Not that getting accepted into university is a *great* proxy but it’s all I could think of besides something like IQ.

    (I’m just thinking aloud here, OP, I realize these data aren’t available)

  5. That seems pretty expected.

    The supply of college degrees have increased, leading to education standards increasing in the job market. Those without college degrees simply get left behind.

  6. To be totally honest, the real earnings only going down by 5% seems incredible to me, given the million things that have changed between 2000 and 2024.

    But I do not believe there is enough provided information to make any meaningful conclusions. Is this due to increased competition from women joining the workforce? Is this because the number of people *with* a degree has increased? Are those people with degrees taking the same jobs that used to be given to people without degrees? Are men getting dumber??! What about *women* without degrees?

  7. Is this the US?

    Because here trades of all kinds are raking in money at fantastic rates. And it’s steady, as soon as one housing development finishes another one starts.

  8. Would love to see the salaries of skilled tradesman like mechanics, electricians, plumbers etc. Men without a degree is a broad category.

  9. It sounds like people without college degrees in 2000 make 5% less in 2025, but that’s not at all what this means. If anyone in that 2000 cohort got a degree they got excluded from then on. New working age men without degrees keep entering the statistic every year as well. So the 2000 and 2025 are different groups of people. 2025 cohort is smaller for example. We would need panel data to better understand the reasons.

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