25 years of flat wages and no increase in the college wage premium, while value of capital has skyrocketed
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Photo: J.P. Morgan striking photographer with cane
I was fooling around with FRED this morning, as one does, and here are some stats: (The FRED numbers are presented in nominal dollars; I’ve converted them to CPI-adjusted dollars).
Median usual weekly earnings of workers with a high school degree only:
2000: $968
2025: $980
Median usual weekly earnings of workers with a bachelor degree only:
2000: $1,587
2025: $1,580
Yikes.
People with only a high school degree have done better in terms of wage growth over the past quarter century than people with a four-year college degree, although the differences are so tiny that it would be fairer to say that wages have been completely flat for both groups.
Does the situation change when we look at people with advanced college degrees as well? It does not:
Median usual weekly earnings of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher:
2000: $1,705
2025: $1,747
The college wage premium, that is, the increased earnings associated with having a college degree as opposed to only being a high school graduate, hasn’t changed at all in the past 25 years, because median real wages have been flat as a pancake for everybody, no matter what their formal education level, for the past quarter century.
I wonder what’s happened to capital over this time? Value of S & P 500, inflation-adjusted, 1/2000 to 9/2025 (same period as the wage data):
2000: $1,394
2025: $6,688
Oh.