Has there been an increase in the wage and salary differential between those with college degrees and those without?

Since the 1980s, less-educated workers have experienced a decline in their inflation-adjusted earnings, while those with college degrees saw their inflation-adjusted earnings rise. An important reason for this is the loss of what had been middle-income jobs, especially in urban and metropolitan areas. Increasingly, the jobs available to those with only a high school education or less in these places are in low-paid occupations with little opportunity for upward mobility. In 1980, non-college workers were split between low- and medium-paid occupations (at 42% and 43%), with the remainder in traditionally high-paid occupations. By 2016, the share of non-college educated workers in mid-pay occupations had fallen to 29%, with about 12 of the overall 14 percentage point decline representing a shift to low-pay jobs and less than a 1.5 percentage point increase in high-pay jobs.