College degrees becoming less valuable as salary premiums plummet and unemployment climbs: report

Break out the caps — and frowns.Benefits of higher education appear to be waning as salary premiums shrank and unemployment among young graduates climbed in recent years, according to shocking new figures.Recent American college grads earned 50% more than contemporaries who only held high school diplomas in 2025, according to numbers from the Federal Reserve recently compiled by the Economist.That’s no small chunk of change, but it’s significantly lower than the premium college grads enjoyed just 10 years prior — in 2015, they earned 69% more than their less-educated counterparts.And their jobs appeared to be in trouble, too, with unemployment rates for grads between the ages of 22 and 27 resting consistently higher than the national average for the first time in history, the Economist reported.That equated to 5.7% of recent college grads being unemployed in June 2026, compared to 4.1% of all workers being unemployed at the same time in a disparity that’s held since around 2020 and began to heighten in 2022.But 15 years ago it was a much different picture — 5.9% of recent grads were unemployed in 2010, compared to 9.3% of all workers, New York Federal Reserve numbers showed.Exactly what is driving the situation remains unclear, with some arguing that decreasing college standards could be resulting in employers seeing little difference between degree-holding candidates and those without.For instance, UC San Diego last year reported a 30-fold increase in students incapable of basic math.

Others suggest the widespread normalization of technological literacy has lowered the requirements of entry-level white collar jobs which were typically filled by college-grads and opened the door to those without degrees.Graduates with advanced degrees from America’s top institutions are also feeling the impact — about 80% of Stanford MBA graduates were employed within three years of graduation in 2024, compared to 91% who had a job at that point in 2021, according t...