Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes for South Carolina

By Taylor Hendrix, Workforce Insights Analyst

Post-secondary education accounts for any form of education after high school. Post-secondary employment outcomes, or PSEO, data provide earnings and employment outcomes for college and university graduates by degree level, degree major, and post-secondary institution. These statistics are generated by matching university transcript data with a national database of jobs and are made possible through data-sharing partnerships between universities, university systems, State Departments of Education, State Labor Market Information offices, and the U.S. Census Bureau. [1]

Average Median Earnings by PSEO and Year

The below figure shows the average median earnings by PSEO and year, with year 10 equating to the highest average earnings and year one equating to the lowest average earnings. The Doctoral – Research/Studies award level has the highest entry-level wages at just under $70K. Year 10 wages show the highest average wage, with each year increasing by about $10K.

Classification of Instruction Programs Graduate Employment

The Classification of Instruction Programs, or CIP codes, is a systematic aid in the method of measuring educational pathways and program completion activity among graduates for PSEO data. There are a total of 54 CIP codes that encompass all industries within the workforce. The CIP code with the most employment overall is the Library Science program with 1,647 graduates, followed by the Engineering program with 1,118 graduates. Rounding out the top three is the Education program with 867 graduates. See below for a data table reflecting this information.

[1] U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics: Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO), https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/pseo_experimental.html