[somenameforme]

Median income of somebody with a bachelor's degree is $60,585 [1].

Median income of a plumber is $59,880 [2].

The big gaps you'll find rely on either average income (where an uncapped high + hard capped low = inflated numbers) or household income. There are numerous biases that deserve mentioning, but the simple component of college debt vs earn while you lean means plumbers are probably already better off on "average".

[1] - https://dqydj.com/income-by-education/

[2] - https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472152.htm

[JamesBarney]

That's a good point I was using average and not median.

But I think my argument that >50% of college grads are better off having gone to college than plumbing school is true.

If you broke it into quartiles i bet the top quartile college graduate does much better than the top quartile plumber. The second quartile grad does moderately better than plumbers. The 3rd quartile about the same and the 4th significantly worse.

I see the quartile data for plumbers trying to find it for bachelor grads.

[randomdata]

> If you broke it into quartiles i bet the top quartile college graduate does much better than the top quartile plumber.

Yes, as long as college here means that one has a professional degree (MD, JD, etc.), where access is granted to a career with an artificially constrained labour supply, thereby producing artificially high incomes. Of course, it's the supply management that boosts incomes, not some mystical power of the degree itself.

Interestingly, having only a bachelor degree seems to put you in a worse position than without, based on what we see in the makeup of high income earners. Which probably isn't too surprising. Graduating from college, save striving for a professional degree to gain access to an artificial market, is where you end up if you weren't already found to be useful in the economy. It's a sign of someone failing economically.