Try it this way, The economy has been doing well enough for long enough that people without colleges were able to get an unemployment rate in the same ballpark as people without college degrees. Do you see on the graph how the numbers are far apart when the numbers are big, but the lines get closer together when the numbers are small? I would also suspect that the wage rate of those employed with college degrees vs not, are still different. You asked in your OP what is the value, I’m telling you. When overall unemployment rises from a recession the lines will seperate and it will reflect it being easier to get a job with a degree than without. If you work for an employer to find a worker and you have 1000 applicants to go through (in a recession higher unemployment so many people looking for jobs) and they all look the same to you, are you going to throw out those without degrees first? Yes. It’s an employers market. What if it’s been a long time since a recession and there are fewer people looking for jobs, so in your next job opening you only get 10 applications, are you going to throw out all applications without a degree? No. It’s a workers market. You are too focused on some data points right at where we are in the present, I would guess we are entering a recession soon (tarrifs, etc) and the jobs that “require” degrees are being shedded first so you are seeing this moment where the unemployment is rising among those with degrees. Not to mention you are directly seeing 1) federal government purge (probably degrees) 2) AI impact (probably degrees) plus random noise in the data that could make it appear closer of further depending on how it zigs and zags. I hope that helps, have a good day.