The Wall Street Journal reports that the only people who saw their real incomes go up during the 2001-2007 economic expansion were workers with professional degrees:
Workers with professional degrees, such as doctors and lawyers, were the only educational group to see their inflation-adjusted earnings increase over the most recent economic expansion, adding to the concern that the economy has benefited higher-earning Americans at the expense of others.
Workers in every other educational group — including Ph.D.s as well as high school dropouts — earned less in 2007 than they did in 2000, adjusted for inflation, according to data from the Census Bureau. Data don’t include 2008 earnings.
The recent data are the latest reminder of how college degrees, long seen as a path to the middle class, no longer guarantees fatter paychecks every year. The statistics also indicate how deeply economic divisions have grown despite the economic expansion that started in 2001. Both presidential candidates have proposed policies to address this inequality.
Does this mean we need a crash program to send every child to med school? Of course not — it means we need an economy that works for every worker, from those with high school diplomas to those with Ph.Ds.
