Key Points
- A new analysis of more than 400,000 voters from the Cooperative Election Study (2016–2025) identifies a distinct and growing cluster of Americans: people with graduate degrees and household incomes of just $30,000 to $60,000 a year.
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York data shows 41.5% of recent college graduates are underemployed (working jobs that don't require a degree) while their unemployment rate sits at 5.7% as of the first quarter of 2026.
- The squeeze is compounding: these households are often paying down student loans, saving for their kids' college, and supporting aging parents at the same time, all while wondering what AI means for their own careers.
For decades, the premise was supposed to be simple: more education meant more money. But a new analysis by statistician Nate Silver, published in his Silver Bulletin newsletter, puts hard numbers on a group that breaks that rule: Americans who are highly educated but not wealthy.
It's a data point that should make families rethink how they calculate the return on a college degree, because the averages that made college look like a sure bet are hiding a widening spread of outcomes underneath.
Families need to remember that college is an investment, and it's not a risk-free investment. And like any investment, you can lose money if you overpay. And overpaying can also mean "buying" additional graduate degrees that aren't necessary.
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The Data: Highly Educated, Modest Incomes
Silver's analysis draws on the Cooperative Election Study, a Harvard-administered survey covering more than 400,000 voters from 2016 through 2025. Cross-tabbing income against education, he found that the highest rate of self-described "very liberal" identification (21%) occurs among postgraduate degree holders with household incomes between $30,000 and $60,000.
Strip away the politics and the economic finding stands on its own: there are now enough graduate-degree holders earning low incomes to form their own measurable demographic cluster. That's a meaningful counterpoint to the averages in the College Board's Education Pays report, which still shows a degree paying off — on average.
One clarification worth making, since the chart has been widely shared: the frequently cited "80% have bachelor's degrees, and 45% earn under $60,000" statistics come from a separate source (the 2021 Democratic Socialists of America member survey of roughly 13,000 respondents) not from the voter data itself. But the two datasets point the same direction.
As Silver writes of this group: "Their class status is ambiguous: privileged in some senses, but they're part of the 'have-nots' in other meaningful ways."
That ambiguity is increasingly common among the 43 million Americans carrying federal student loan debt.
Why More Degrees Aren't Automatically Producing More Wealth
The clearest culprit is underemployment. Over-educated and under-employed is one of the biggest risks of graduate degree holders.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's labor market tracker, 41.5% of recent college graduates are working in jobs that don't typically require even a college degree, and recent-grad unemployment stood at 5.7% in the first quarter of 2026.
While a degree still lowers your odds of being jobless over a career, it's no longer functioning as a reliable fast-pass to a higher wage job.
AI anxiety is layering on top of that. A Lumina Foundation-Gallup survey conducted in late 2025 found that 42% of bachelor's degree students have given at least a fair amount of thought to changing their major because of AI, and 16% of enrolled students say they already have.
The concern isn't hypothetical: a Stanford study found entry-level software jobs down nearly 20% as AI reshapes hiring for new graduates. When the fields that promised the strongest degree ROI are the ones shedding entry-level roles, the education-to-wealth pipeline gets tougher.
Meanwhile, the cost side of the equation keeps climbing. The average cost of college rose again in 2025, and a recent analysis projects the class of 2026 will borrow roughly $43,500 for a bachelor's degree under new federal repayment rules.
Higher sticker prices plus flat-to-shrinking entry-level wages is exactly the math that makes college riskier than it's ever been.
The Family Squeeze: Paying For College While Supporting Parents
For the households in the middle of this data, the degree-ROI question hits home. According to the Pew Research Center, 23% of U.S. adults (and 54% of Americans in their 40s) are "sandwiched" between an aging parent and a child they're raising or financially supporting. Many are doing that while still making their own monthly student loan payments.
These are the same parents now being asked to fund the next generation's education, and the data on what families really pay for college out of pocket shows the burden falling heavily on current income, not just savings or financial aid.
A parent who borrowed for a graduate degree that never delivered a graduate-level income, who is helping cover a parent's care costs, and who is staring down a $40,000-plus borrowing projection for their own child is living the exact economics Silver's chart describes.
Washington has started responding to the ROI problem directly. Under recently enacted rules, degree programs whose graduates consistently earn too little will lose access to federal student loans. This is an acknowledgment, in policy form, that not all credentials pay for themselves, especially at the graduate school level.
What Families Should Take From This
The lesson isn't that college is a bad investment. The college earnings premium is real on average.
The lesson instead is that college is not a risk-free investment. Like any investment, the return depends on what you pay, and overpaying can leave you worse off than if you'd never made the investment at all.
That overpayment happens two ways: paying too high a price for the degree itself, or stacking on additional degrees that don't add additional earning power. The educated-but-not-wealthy cluster in Silver's data is heaviest among postgraduate degree holders: people who, in many cases, paid for credentials the labor market didn't reward financially.
With this is mind, families need to do the math on the value of the specific degree, at the specific price, for the specific career — before borrowing, not after. That means running the ROI numbers on the intended major against the projected total cost, keeping total borrowing within reach of a realistic first-year salary, and treating graduate school as a second, separate investment decision that has to justify itself with verified salary and debt data rather than want.
A degree purchased at the right price remains one of the best investments a family can make. The same degree purchased at the wrong price (or extra credentials the market doesn't value) is how you end up with a graduate degree and a working-class income.
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Editor: Colin Graves
Robert Farrington is the founder of The College Investor and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on student loan debt and saving for college. He holds an MBA from UC San Diego Rady School of Management and has spent over 15 years researching, writing, and advising on student loans, 529 plans, financial aid programs, and saving and investing for young professionals.
Robert has been featured in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC News, and Forbes, where he has been a regular personal finance contributor for over a decade. His work combines both professional expertise and personal experience – he successfully navigated his own student loan repayment journey and has helped thousands of readers do the same.
He is committed to making the intersection of personal finance and education transparent and accessible. You can learn more about Robert on the About Page or on his personal site RobertFarrington.com.