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>> The median wage for workers with some college education but no four-year degree is $835 per week, about 10 percent less than it was at the turn of the centur

>> The median wage for workers with some college education but no four-year degree is $835 per week, about 10 percent less than it was at the turn of the century, after inflation This is a crazy sentence if you think about it. For a significant part of society wages did not only stagnate, they dropped. I don't think the trend will reverse any time soon. If the wages of another profecion rose 10 percent and were equal before, we would see a 22 percent difference (which is a lot!). Since this is the trend for all workers with some college education but without a four year degree, i think it's a dire situation for those people. There's no easy way out (the article suggesst moving!). The suggestion in the article may be smart on an individual level, but it could lead to a further segregation between sucessfull and not sucessfull regions.

thrower123 7y ago
On the other hand, $835 a week is over $20/hour, which to my blue-collar redneck-steeped brain, seems like pretty damned good for somebody with no education - and a partial college education is not worth a flying fuck, because the way things are structured, it's typically all core high school++ courses for the first year or two, before going into actually field-specific training.
- moate 7y ago
  You sound delightful. Also, there's plenty of associate degrees out there which represent a college education, non-4-year degree. Many of those represent trade/union type jobs (mechanics and many other types of technicians) with good pay rates
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't cross into personal attack on HN. "Be kind. Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lallysingh 7y ago
  My first year was programming and vector calculus. Second year was operations systems internals and differential equations. And this wasn't even a top tier school.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    Computer Science and Engineering are more trade-focused programs that provide real value. Liberal arts are inherently fuzzy, and worthless economically without the paperwork that signifies completion.
PKop 7y ago
While asset prices and other costs rose (in many places at least).
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Comparison used is "after inflation"
ed_balls 7y ago
Keep in mind that 20 years ago the population of people with four-year was smaller.
- dalbasal 7y ago
  This. People with/without degrees are not a "segment of the population," comparable from one generation to another. College got more common. What actually happened is that more people from less wealthy backgrounds went to college.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Think of all of the time and dollars wasted on unnecessary college educations because employers required it (even the most junior role requiring a 4 year degree to check the box) but wages are still stagnant or sliding back.
    - lalos 7y ago
      For employers the situation is great, more supply and cheaper salaries. The strategy of asking for college education worked.
tosser0001 7y ago
It would be interesting to calculate how much better wages are given country of origin. What I mean is, there are currently about 28 million immigrants living in the U.S. with about 1.2 million arriving every year (both documented and undocumented.) According to statistics, 30% of new immigrants have no high school diploma, so while the average wage is low, it's probably much higher than they would be getting in their native country (otherwise, presumably, many woudn't have left in the first place.) This may be putting pressure on wage growth for native-born Americans but overall growth as a whole may be stronger than it looks.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Also, employers don’t value foreign degrees very much, so if the category of people with “some college” or a “college degree” includes many more immigrants, you’ll see average incomes go down.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- thatfrenchguy 7y ago
  > According to statistics, 30% of new immigrants have no high school diploma, so while the average wage is low, it's probably much higher than they would be getting in their native country (otherwise, presumably, many woudn't have left in the first place.) You forget about cost of living here.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  If anyone has data on this, I'd love to know. But I'm willing to bet globalization (wages in China) have a much larger effect on wages for average US jobs than immigrants coming to the US do. There's a lot more competition to do almost anything in China or India than there is from (potentially) lower paid immigrants in the US. Sure, not everything can be outsourced. But for everything else...
rayiner 7y ago
The statistic isn’t useful standing alone. The turn of the century was two decades ago, and college attendance rates have changed substantially. I can’t find a statistic for “some college,” but the percentage of people who have completed college increased from 20% to 30% from 2000 to 2015. The group of people who have “some college” in 2019 is much broader than the same group in 2000.
lg 7y ago
but does this wage amount control for the value of benefits esp. health insurance? otherwise not sure these are comparable.
- candiodari 7y ago
  I bet if you included additional benefits the drop would be much bigger, not smaller.
  - yellowstuff 7y ago
    > The average worker received 32 percent of total compensation in benefits including bonuses, paid leave and company contributions to insurance and retirement plans in the second quarter of 2018. That was up from 27 percent in 2000, federal data show. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/us/politics/wage-growth-benefits.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/us/politics/wage-growth-b...
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  > benefits esp. health insurance? otherwise not sure these are comparable. I'm confused by this argument. Has the value provided by health insurance gotten better to make up for the additional cost? If you're paying those 10% into health insurance and the benefit hasn't increased with that increase in cost, I'd say you're moving backwards.
  - burfog 7y ago
    Yes, dramatically so. Cancer now has a 70% survival rate. HIV is not a death sentence. You can get a heart valve installed without cutting apart your rib cage. That stuff doesn't come free. It would be kind of neat to offer the option of a 1950s level of care, only modernizing things if cost would be reduced by newer technology. Lots of people survived the 1950s just fine. Even just going back to 1995 would be a huge difference, avoiding all currently active patents.
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
mfer 7y ago
If all of those people had 4 year degrees to have a higher wage job we would be absent people to do many job necessary for our society to operate. This growing gap shows how we value people, many in roles that our society requires.
ekianjo 7y ago
Wait, many more people have college education nowadays than at the turn of the century, so you should expect the overall value of a college education to drop a little... simple demand and supply. On top of that, there are a lot of college education programs that have close to no market value (i.e. leading to no actual jobs or already in saturated job markets) so you should expect this to impact the median earnings, and lead to adjustments to take place over time (instead of seeing a linear growth).
m463 7y ago
I would be interested to see the average wage of the US vs the average wage of the world over time. I imagine the net result of globalization will be to make the two converge. (hopefully human rights will be converging too EDIT: I mean rise)
JoshuaDavid 7y ago
I think there is a bit of a simpson's paradox thing going on here. Going by the BLS data here[1], in Q1 of 2000, 31.5% of workers (who are over the age of 25, all races and genders) had no college and 15.6% had some college but no degree, so people with some college but no degree were between percentiles 31.5 and 47.1 in terms of educational attainment. In Q1 of 2019, 21.9% of workers had no college and 18.6% of workers had some college but no degree, so people with some college but no degree are now between percentiles 21.9 and 40.5. In other words, in 2000, the 25th percentile worker by education level had no college education, and in 2019 the 25th percentile worker by education level does have some college education (but no degree). The 25th percentile worker by education level makes more money in 2019 than they did in 2000, even when adjusting for inflation, but which category they are counted in has changed as the population becomes more educated. (more can be said, and has been said elsewhere, about how much of the purpose of higher education is to develop one's skills and how much is to serve as an IQ / conscientiousness test that employers can't be sued for using) [1] https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpswktab5.htm https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpswktab5.htm

thrower123 7y ago

On the other hand, $835 a week is over $20/hour, which to my blue-collar redneck-steeped brain, seems like pretty damned good for somebody with no education - and a partial college education is not worth a flying fuck, because the way things are structured, it's typically all core high school++ courses for the first year or two, before going into actually field-specific training.

moate 7y ago
You sound delightful. Also, there's plenty of associate degrees out there which represent a college education, non-4-year degree. Many of those represent trade/union type jobs (mechanics and many other types of technicians) with good pay rates
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't cross into personal attack on HN. "Be kind. Don't be snarky." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lallysingh 7y ago
My first year was programming and vector calculus. Second year was operations systems internals and differential equations. And this wasn't even a top tier school.
- thrower123 7y ago
  Computer Science and Engineering are more trade-focused programs that provide real value. Liberal arts are inherently fuzzy, and worthless economically without the paperwork that signifies completion.

PKop 7y ago

While asset prices and other costs rose (in many places at least).

sokoloff 7y ago
Comparison used is "after inflation"

ed_balls 7y ago

Keep in mind that 20 years ago the population of people with four-year was smaller.

dalbasal 7y ago
This. People with/without degrees are not a "segment of the population," comparable from one generation to another. College got more common. What actually happened is that more people from less wealthy backgrounds went to college.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Think of all of the time and dollars wasted on unnecessary college educations because employers required it (even the most junior role requiring a 4 year degree to check the box) but wages are still stagnant or sliding back.
  - lalos 7y ago
    For employers the situation is great, more supply and cheaper salaries. The strategy of asking for college education worked.

tosser0001 7y ago

It would be interesting to calculate how much better wages are given country of origin. What I mean is, there are currently about 28 million immigrants living in the U.S. with about 1.2 million arriving every year (both documented and undocumented.) According to statistics, 30% of new immigrants have no high school diploma, so while the average wage is low, it's probably much higher than they would be getting in their native country (otherwise, presumably, many woudn't have left in the first place.) This may be putting pressure on wage growth for native-born Americans but overall growth as a whole may be stronger than it looks.

rayiner 7y ago
Also, employers don’t value foreign degrees very much, so if the category of people with “some college” or a “college degree” includes many more immigrants, you’ll see average incomes go down.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thatfrenchguy 7y ago
> According to statistics, 30% of new immigrants have no high school diploma, so while the average wage is low, it's probably much higher than they would be getting in their native country (otherwise, presumably, many woudn't have left in the first place.) You forget about cost of living here.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
If anyone has data on this, I'd love to know. But I'm willing to bet globalization (wages in China) have a much larger effect on wages for average US jobs than immigrants coming to the US do. There's a lot more competition to do almost anything in China or India than there is from (potentially) lower paid immigrants in the US. Sure, not everything can be outsourced. But for everything else...

rayiner 7y ago

The statistic isn’t useful standing alone. The turn of the century was two decades ago, and college attendance rates have changed substantially. I can’t find a statistic for “some college,” but the percentage of people who have completed college increased from 20% to 30% from 2000 to 2015. The group of people who have “some college” in 2019 is much broader than the same group in 2000.

lg 7y ago

but does this wage amount control for the value of benefits esp. health insurance? otherwise not sure these are comparable.

candiodari 7y ago
I bet if you included additional benefits the drop would be much bigger, not smaller.
- yellowstuff 7y ago
  > The average worker received 32 percent of total compensation in benefits including bonuses, paid leave and company contributions to insurance and retirement plans in the second quarter of 2018. That was up from 27 percent in 2000, federal data show. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/us/politics/wage-growth-benefits.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/us/politics/wage-growth-b...
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
> benefits esp. health insurance? otherwise not sure these are comparable. I'm confused by this argument. Has the value provided by health insurance gotten better to make up for the additional cost? If you're paying those 10% into health insurance and the benefit hasn't increased with that increase in cost, I'd say you're moving backwards.
- burfog 7y ago
  Yes, dramatically so. Cancer now has a 70% survival rate. HIV is not a death sentence. You can get a heart valve installed without cutting apart your rib cage. That stuff doesn't come free. It would be kind of neat to offer the option of a 1950s level of care, only modernizing things if cost would be reduced by newer technology. Lots of people survived the 1950s just fine. Even just going back to 1995 would be a huge difference, avoiding all currently active patents.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

mfer 7y ago

If all of those people had 4 year degrees to have a higher wage job we would be absent people to do many job necessary for our society to operate. This growing gap shows how we value people, many in roles that our society requires.

ekianjo 7y ago

Wait, many more people have college education nowadays than at the turn of the century, so you should expect the overall value of a college education to drop a little... simple demand and supply. On top of that, there are a lot of college education programs that have close to no market value (i.e. leading to no actual jobs or already in saturated job markets) so you should expect this to impact the median earnings, and lead to adjustments to take place over time (instead of seeing a linear growth).

m463 7y ago

I would be interested to see the average wage of the US vs the average wage of the world over time. I imagine the net result of globalization will be to make the two converge. (hopefully human rights will be converging too EDIT: I mean rise)

JoshuaDavid 7y ago

I think there is a bit of a simpson's paradox thing going on here. Going by the BLS data here[1], in Q1 of 2000, 31.5% of workers (who are over the age of 25, all races and genders) had no college and 15.6% had some college but no degree, so people with some college but no degree were between percentiles 31.5 and 47.1 in terms of educational attainment. In Q1 of 2019, 21.9% of workers had no college and 18.6% of workers had some college but no degree, so people with some college but no degree are now between percentiles 21.9 and 40.5. In other words, in 2000, the 25th percentile worker by education level had no college education, and in 2019 the 25th percentile worker by education level does have some college education (but no degree). The 25th percentile worker by education level makes more money in 2019 than they did in 2000, even when adjusting for inflation, but which category they are counted in has changed as the population becomes more educated. (more can be said, and has been said elsewhere, about how much of the purpose of higher education is to develop one's skills and how much is to serve as an IQ / conscientiousness test that employers can't be sued for using) [1] https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpswktab5.htm https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpswktab5.htm