Virus exposes sharp economic divide: College vs. non-college

BALTIMORE (AP) — For an American workforce under continuing threat from the coronavirus, the best protection might just be a college degree.

Friday's jobs report for May delivered a major pleasant surprise, with lower unemployment and 2.5 million added jobs, instead of the darkening picture that had been widely expected.

Yet the damage inflicted on the job market since February has highlighted a widening line of inequality based on education. In a nation in which a majority of workers lack a degree, college graduates are far more likely to be inoculated from the pain.

In May, the overall unemployment rate was 13.3%, down from 14.7% in April. For workers with only a high school diploma, the jobless rate was 15.3%. For college graduates, it was just 7.4%.

Fewer than half of high school graduates are now working. Two-thirds of college graduates are.

The roughly 20 million jobs lost in the aftermath of the coronavirus are amplifying the economic inequalities between college graduates and other workers that have been evident for years, said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, who has long studied the topic.

“It’s laying bare the class and racial differences in America,” Carnevale said. “It’s very plain to see because it all shows up in the data.”

At a time when advanced education has become increasingly vital to household prosperity, nearly two-thirds of Americans lack a college degree.

About 90% of the jobs that were added during the first three years of the Trump presidency went to college graduates. Census Bureau figures show that the average college graduate's income is twice as high as high school-only workers.

And at a moment when the country is confronting the challenges of racism and police...