Soaring student debt loads and high levels of unemployment even among college graduates have led some people to question whether college is worth the money.

New research from the Cleveland Fed provides the latest evidence that the answer is “yes” — but with a couple caveats.

First a bit of raw data, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: The unemployment rate for Americans with less than a high school degree was 12.7% in July. For those with a diploma but no college? 8.7%. Some college or an associate’s degree brings the rate down to 7.1%, and a bachelor’s degree or higher brings it down to 4.1%. So, more education clearly leads to better job prospects.

It also leads to better jobs. The median worker with just a high school diploma earned $638 a week in 2011, 39% less than someone with a college degree.

The trouble with those numbers, though, is that they’re extraordinarily broad, lumping together doctors and elementary school teachers and giving no indication of how the benefits of college have evolved over time.