Is College Worth It?
Americans have mixed views on the importance of having a degree. 47% say the cost is worth it only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Americans have mixed views on the importance of having a degree. 47% say the cost is worth it only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans.
Women have overtaken men and now account for more than half (50.7%) of the college-educated labor force in the United States.
The charts below allow for comparisons between racial or ethnic groups over time on a range of measures including educational attainment, household income, life expectancy and others. You may select any two groups at a time for comparison.
The higher education pipeline suggests a long path is ahead for increasing diversity, especially in fields like computing and engineering.
Between February and June 2020, the share of young adults who are neither enrolled in school nor employed has more than doubled.
The 30-year low reflects in part tight labor markets and falling unemployment, but also higher shares of young women at work or in school.
Through both recession and recovery, the share of young adults living in their parents’ home continues to rise. As of 2016, 15% of 25- to 35-year-old Millennials were living in their parents’ home.
Millennial workers are just as likely to stick with their employers as their older counterparts in Generation X were when they were young adults.
New projections indicate that the female share of the labor force will peak at 47.1% in 2025 and then taper off to 46.3% by 2060.
In 2012, a record 69% of the nation’s new college graduates had taken out student loans to finance their education. Graduates from more affluent families are much more likely to borrow today than 20 years ago.
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