When students choose a field of study to major in, they require information on the employment opportunities likely available to them when they complete their studies. When post-secondary program planners decide which programs should be expanded or contracted, they need to know which programs are over- or under-supplying graduates relative to the jobs available that call for their graduates. When employers are looking to expand their workforce, they want to seek out new graduates of programs that best prepare them for the positions they hope to fill. A crucial requirement for a strong economy, therefore, is actionable information on the alignment between the fields of study students are graduating from and the knowledge and skill sets required by the jobs available to them. 

In a dynamic and robust economy, workers advance their careers and improve their well-being by transitioning to better opportunities as they become available. Most job openings that arise are filled by incumbent workers looking to make these upward transitions in their careers. However, existing measures of the demand for new graduates of post-secondary programs fail to account for the inter-occupational transitions that incumbent workers are constantly making. 

In his recent Minnesota Economic Trends article, Measuring Alignment Between Post-secondary Graduates and Employment Opportunities, Labor Market Analyst Steve Hine describes how information from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey is used to measure career transitions of incumbent workers, thus allowing us to estimate the occupational opportunities available to new graduates. This allows the alignment of this demand-side measure with the number of students graduating from the various programs of study, the supply-side, to estimate the alignment across majors and occupations.  

The article concentrates on programs providing students with vocational certificates of less than two years and associate of arts degrees. Some of the findings: there is a shortage of students graduating with vocational certificates preparing them to be nursing assistants and machinists, as well as a shortage of students graduating with AA degrees in the veterinary technician and dental hygienist fields. Such information could help students chose fields that ensure their investment in education leads to a job in a related field. 

Minnesota Economic Trends is the quarterly magazine from DEED’s Labor Market Information Office that provides expert analysis of the state's labor market, industries and economy. 

Steve Hine is the former director of the Labor Market Information Office at DEED.