Higher education leaders have long struggled to answer two deceptively simple questions: “where do our graduates work?” and “what are they earning?” Response rates to surveys that historically collect this information are declining, individual state data systems typically do not track graduates across state lines, and commercial datasets with these data are opaque and costly. The US Census Bureau’s Postsecondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) program provides a compelling alternative by linking de-identified college and university graduate records with national employment and earnings data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program.

PSEO provides public, transparent data on employment location, industry, and earnings distributions for graduating cohorts, disaggregated by institution and field of study. Because the data uses nationwide employment records, not just one state’s wage file, PSEO can track alumni who leave the state and report on the industry they work in and what they are earning. This provides a more complete picture of the labor market outcomes of graduates and, therefore, represents a significant step forward for states and institutions trying to demonstrate the value of higher education to students, policymakers, and the public.

How are state decision makers using PSEO data?

States and institutional decision makers, along with researchers, are starting to use the PSEO in a variety of ways. For example:

  • Understanding the rate at which students stay “in-state” after graduation (and where students go when they do not stay). States and institutions are using PSEO to quantify the share of graduates in different programs of study who are employed in-state versus out-of-state at one, five, and 10 years after graduation, which can be especially useful in workforce development.
  • Mapping graduates to industries that matter locally. Because PSEO reports employment by industry, states can analyze how well the credentials of graduating cohorts align with their priority sectors (e.g., health care, advanced manufacturing, logistics).
  • Setting expectations about earnings by field of study and over time. PSEO publishes earnings percentiles (not just averages), which helps states, stakeholders, and students understand the full ranges of salaries earned by graduates of specific programs, and reveals how the distribution of pay typically evolves one, five, and 10 years after graduation.
  • Communicating public value to a variety of audiences. Simple PSEO visuals can help ground debates about the value of a college degree in publicly available data.

Below are some specific sample dashboards that institutions and states have developed for different purposes. For information about how researchers integrate PSEO data in their work, see our recent report.

Sample dashboards

The PSEO Coalition recently published a series of resources highlighting how some of its members are using the PSEO data to build public-facing data tools; in addition, the US Census Bureau maintains the PSEO Explorer tool for public users as well. Below, we share more about a few of the dashboards the PSEO Coalition highlighted in their resource library:

  • The Iowa Department of Education uses PSEO data in its Iowa Education Outcomes tool to expand its outcomes research on community college students by comparing graduates in Iowa to graduates employed in other states. The PSEO tab in the dashboard provides data visualizations, including maps and interactive charts, to show where graduates are working and what they are earning by institution, credential level, and field of study.
  • The Iowa Board of Regents uses PSEO data in two of its data dashboards: Wages and Outcomes and Recent Alumni Career Outcome: Income & Student Debt by Program. The Wages and Outcomes dashboard focuses on the employment outcomes of graduates from the three public universities in Iowa. The Recent Alumni Career Outcomes dashboard, mandated by state law, combines PSEO earnings data with data on graduate school participation. Each Iowa Regent university is required to distribute links to this dashboard to all new students annually, to help students make informed decisions about their choice of major.
  • The Montana University System Student Success Dashboard includes state and PSEO data to display trends in graduate employment and earnings over time. The dashboard was designed to enable policymakers, educators, and the public to better understand the economic outcomes of Montana’s postsecondary graduates. The “Nationwide Employment” tab uses PSEO data to show employment outcomes for graduates and filter by multiple dimensions, including institution, degree level, field of study, and geographic employment outcomes.
  • The Ohio Department of Higher Education created a dashboard to provide detailed information on the employment outcomes of Ohio graduates. The employment outcomes for Ohio graduates can be broken out by degree level, field of study, and years since graduation, allowing for a deeper understanding of how different factors may impact short- and long-term earnings. The information is made available to the general public.
  • The University System of Georgia uses PSEO data in the Your Future Earnings section of its Georgia Degrees Pay. The website aims to help students and parents choose among institutions and majors. In addition to allowing users to view earnings information by institution and field of study, it also incorporates student loan debt and repayment information to provide additional context for the earnings data.
  • The University of Utah Earnings Comparison Tool enables users to easily compare earnings outcomes across various institutions and fields of study. The tool was designed to allow for institution-to-institution comparisons as well as institution-to-peer group comparisons (such as other research universities).

Conclusion

PSEO is helping to shift the conversation from anecdotal evidence of workforce relevance to data and evidence that is helpful for several audiences. For students and families, it sets clearer expectations about potential employment outcomes for different programs. For institutions, it informs program design and potential collaborations with relevant employers. For policymakers, it can serve as a foundation for anchoring funding and informing policy-making that aligns education with the workforce in their states. Underpinning all these uses, PSEO helps both states and institutions credibly demonstrate how various programs align with the workforce and provides evidence of the real earnings that program graduates can realize over time.