"In Britain, productivity and graduate earnings alike have never recovered from the financial crisis" [financial crisis]
"the steady ramping up of the minimum wage has squeezed the earnings premium from the lower end too" [minimum wage]
The article's comparative data shows US, Canadian, French, and Dutch graduates all saw real earnings gains post-2004 despite education expansion, while UK graduates saw none. The article attributes this not to education quality (UK graduates are 'if anything slightly less skilled' than peers by OECD measures) but to productivity growth differentials. This signals a structural dynamic: in low-productivity economies, education expansion cannot sustain graduate wage premiums because the economy lacks the output growth to fund skilled-job wage growth. The mechanism is macroeconomic, not pedagogical.
The article treats minimum wage increases as a secondary squeeze on the graduate premium, operating alongside insufficient skilled-job creation. In a high-productivity economy, minimum wage increases can be absorbed by broad wage growth; in a low-productivity economy like the UK, they mechanically compress the gap between graduate and non-graduate earnings. This suggests a structural constraint: wage-floor policy has asymmetric effects depending on underlying productivity growth, and can inadvertently erode skill premiums in stagnant economies.