A new Pew Research Center analysis, using Census Bureau data, estimates that the typical adult with a bachelor’s degree (but no further education) will earn $1.42 million over a 40-year career, compared with $770,000 for a typical high school graduate.
During the sluggish two-year recovery from the Great Recession, men have gained 768,000 jobs while women have lost 218,000 jobs. This new gender gap in employment trends represents a sharp turnabout from the recession itself, when men lost more than twice as many jobs as women.
College costs are rising, student debt is mounting, and most Americans say college fails to deliver good value for the money. Meantime, only 19% of college presidents say the U.S. system is the best in the world. However, more than eight-in-ten college graduates say college was a good investment for them personally.
Graduates who received a bachelor’s degree in 2008 borrowed 50% more than their counterparts who graduated in 1996, while graduates who earned an associate’s degree or undergraduate certificate in 2008 borrowed more than twice what their counterparts in 1996 had borrowed.
Among married couples with their own children under 18 at home, the share with a working wife and unemployed husband went up in 41 states in 2009, compared with the year before, according to a new Census Bureau analysis of data from the American Community Survey.
The recession-era boom in the size of freshman classes at four-year colleges, community colleges and trade schools has been driven largely by a sharp increase in minority student enrollment.
Of the 13 recessions that the American public has endured since the Great Depression of 1929-33, none has presented a more punishing combination of length, breadth and depth than this one.
Long-term unemployment takes a much deeper toll than short-term unemployment on a person’s finances, emotional well-being and career prospects.
In the past, when relatively few wives worked, marriage enhanced the economic status of women more than that of men. Recently, however, the economic gains associated with marriage have been greater for men.
Women now make up almost half of the U.S. labor force, up from 38% in 1970. The public approves of this trend, but the change has come with a cost for many women — particularly working mothers of young children, who feel the tug of family responsibility much more acutely than do working fathers.
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