On average, even after fifteen years of work, people who’d graduated in high unemployment years were still earning 2.5 percent less than those who’d graduated in low unemployment years. In some cases, the wage difference between graduating in an especially strong year versus an especially weak one was 20 percent—not just immediately after college but even when these men had reached their late thirties.27 The total cost, in inflation-adjusted terms, of graduating in a bad year rather than a good year averaged about $100,000. Timing wasn’t everything—but it was a six-figure thing.
