More U.S. workers than ever have college degrees—but the tide could be turninꦗg against higher e⛎ducation in the workplace.

As of 2020, 67% of workers had at least some college education, 40% of whom had a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to census data analyzed by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta last week. That’s up from 2000, when only 55% had at least some college, as the chart below shows.

“The importance of obtaining postsecondary credentials as a means of achieving economic mobility and a decent wage has been stressed for decades,” Nyerere Hodge, Stuart Andreason, a🔴nd Carl E. Van Horn wrote in the report. “Today, a larger percentage of Americans in the labor force have a higher education degree than at any other time in U.S. history.”

College enrollment rates have slipped in recent years, however, as the cost of education has risen and the perceived value of a degree has diminished. The enrollment rate among 18- to 24-year-olds peaked at 42% in 2011 and had fallen to 38% by 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The share of job openings requiring a college degree fell to 44% in 2021 from 51% in 2017, a 2022 analysis by the Burning Glass Institute found. Only 51% of U.S. adults considered having a college education “very important” in 2019, down from 70% in 2013, a Gallup poll found.

Workers with college degrees still command far higher wages than those without. Those with at least bachelor’s degrees earned on average 75% more than their high-school educated counterparts in 2022, down from a 79% wage premium in the early 2010s, according to an analysis by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. 

Students have had to take on increasing amounts of debt, in the form of student loans, to reap those benefits, with overall federal student loan debt more than tripling to $1.6 trillion between 2007 and 2023, according to the Department of Education. For some borrowers, this means six-figure debts that can take decades to pay off—if they ever are paid off. For borrowers with federally-held student loans, those debts are coming due again in October, when the pandemic-era pause on payments is set to end.

Another factor to consider: the new SAVE income-based repayment plan for federal borrowers, which caps required p𝔉ayments for undergraduate debt at 10% of disposable income for undergraduate loans. The SAVE plan will reduce that to 5% next year, and stops interest from accumulating for borrowers making the required payments. This new repayment option could make student loan debt more manageable for borrowers who don’t immediately convert their pricey degrees into high-salary jobs.