Introduction

There is an implied understanding between the students who take on debt to attend college, the federal government that provides loans and grants on behalf of the student to pursue a degree, and the college that receives payment to provide education. The belief is that investments in higher education will lead students to gainful employment in a field related to their college major or program. Moreover, students expect that there will be adequate demand for their degree in the labor market—assuming colleges only offer degrees related to in-demand careers, or that a degree will provide them with skills and experiences that will make them employable. Unfortunately for millions of Americans, colleges are not always productive partners and may offer many programs that train students for careers that are not in demand or have very low demand.

As a strong first step to center labor market outcomes in education, President Trump and Education Secretary McMahon have spearheaded reforms that hold low-value programs accountable by removing federal support. To build upon these reforms, Congress must ensure that investments in postsecondary education require recipients to link education at the program level to meaningful labor market outcomes. With strong connections between education data systems and wage data systems, and enhancements to the current data collected, colleges can become partners in providing students with meaningful career information to inform both their choices and their abilities to fill critical workforce needs.

This research report will provide an overview of how states currently connect education to workforce outcomes and will provide examples of how employment outcomes are reported by states. The report will present the case for enhancing unemployment insurance wage records and connecting enhanced wage data to educational data systems. Since calls to enhance wage records are not new, common questions are addressed, thereby reducing impediments to widespread adoption. The final section of this report provides recommendations on how to ensure the collection and dissemination of employment and labor market outcome data under federal statute, and how to incentivize the adoption of enhanced wage records at the state level.[1]

Investments in Higher Education Should Lead to Positive Outcomes

Over the last 25 years, the harmful message that any college degree provides a ticket to the middle-class—coupled with runaway spending on student amenities and administrative bloat—spurred the increase of federal student loan debt. In 2007, federal loan borrowers held $520 billion in collective debt, with an average balance of $18,200 per borrower. Those numbers grew to $1.778 trillion for all federal borrowers by the end of 2024, with an average balance of $38,400 per borrower (Hanson, 2026a). While students took on increasing amounts of debt, colleges and universities did little to rein in costs; rather, these institutions increased the cost of attendance by an average compounded rate of 4.04% every year since 2000. This is particularly alarming when one considers that the average total annual inflation rate over the same period was 2.56% (Hanson, 2026b; Hanson, 2025). Today, American students who wish to attend college can reasonably expect to pay an average of $38,270 per year (Hanson, 2026b).

It could be argued that taking on student debt is a necessary evil, so long as graduates receive a positive return-on-investment (ROI). However, potential warning signs in wage and unemployment data may be signaling that the benefits of a college degree carry diminishing benefits in the job market. For example, between 2000 and 2019, the real median wages for workers (adjusted to 2019 dollars) remained mostly flat, growing only a small amount from $28.54 an hour in 2000 to $28.85 an hour in 2019 (U.S. Congressional Research Service, 2020). While real wages barely moved, unemployment rates for Americans with four-year degrees rose. Bachelor's degree holders now make up over 25% of all unemployed workers—2.5 times greater than their share of the unemployed in December 2000 (9.92%). Today, there are roughly 1.9 million unemployed Americans with a four-year college degree (Boesler, 2025).

In an effort to reverse these trends, Congress has taken several steps to rein in unsustainable borrowing and increase financial transparency in higher education. As part of the Working Families Tax Cut Act (WFTC), the borrowing limits for unsubsidized graduate degree and professional degree loans are now capped at new lifetime limits of $100,000 and $200,000, respectively. Additionally, WFTC ensures that only degrees that provide positive ROI are eligible to receive federal funding. The WFTC provision specifically removes federal grant eligibility for bachelor’s programs whose graduates earn less than the average high school graduate and for graduate programs whose graduates earn less than the average bachelor’s degree holder (AFPI, 2025).

Beyond WFTC, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has announced further plans “to improve consumer education and increase transparency for student borrowers” (U.S. Department of Education, 2025a). On December 8, 2025, ED unveiled a new earnings indicator on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) that provides an informational warning to prospective borrowers if an institution’s average earnings for graduates are below those of average high school graduates’ earnings (U.S. Department of Education, 2025b). Looking at the College Scorecard, almost one out of every four institutions fails to lead graduates into careers with average earnings greater than those of workers with only a high school diploma (Knott, 2025).

While the Trump Administration is taking significant steps to increase financial transparency and show ROI in higher education, there are other avenues to hold colleges accountable. One method is to make direct connections between educational attainment and employment outcomes. The Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21^st Century Act (Perkins V) and Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) both require states to report certain employment outcome data for program participants. While Perkins V governs career and technical education (CTE) in both K-12 and postsecondary settings and WIOA supports job training (which often takes place at a community college), adult education, and employment services, together they offer clear federal precedent for reporting employment and labor market outcomes in federally funded postsecondary education and workforce programs.

Through Perkins V, states must report the percentage of high school CTE concentrators who “are in postsecondary education or advanced training, military service or a service program that receives assistance under title I of the National and Community Service Act of 1990 … or are employed” in the second quarter after exiting high school (H.R. 2353, 2018). For postsecondary CTE concentrators, states must report a similar combined metric that tracks the percentage of concentrators who are continuing enrollment in postsecondary education, in the military or service program, or employed. While Perkins V requires states to report post-completion outcomes, it is difficult for stakeholders to discern whether a CTE program in a particular field led students into a related career. For example, as written currently, a student in a healthcare program would not know whether previous CTE concentrators are employed in a related career (e.g., nursing, nursing assistant, phlebotomist). At best, most high school and college students would know that previous CTE students were either enrolled in some college or employed at some job.

WIOA also requires that states report employment outcomes such as the percentage of participants who are employed in the second and fourth quarters after program exit and the median earnings in the second quarter after program exit (H.R. 803, 2014). Yet, like Perkins V, there is no direct requirement that states report what type of occupation a participant entered or whether it is related to the specific training they received. This is a particular concern given that these programs are intended to lead program participants into high-skill, high-wage, and in-demand careers.

As ED continues to partner with the Department of Labor (DOL) to manage important education programs and grants, there will be an increased focus on the employment and labor market outcomes resulting from federal investments in higher education. Steps to increase transparency in tuition and student loans at the federal level will provide better data to consumers and steer them away from high-cost, low-value education. However, there needs to be greater emphasis on creating systems at the state and federal levels to collect and maintain meaningful data that connects education to employment outcomes. When done correctly, states that connect education records to employment data will be able to provide critical information that benefits students, businesses, investors, policymakers, and workforce development boards at the local level.

How States Connect Education Data to Wage Records: Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems

State policymakers often need robust data that tracks students across time. To support data-informed decision making, most states track student-level data across these four core areas: early learning, K-12, postsecondary education, and the workforce. When a state connects student-level data from at least two of these areas, it is referred to as a “statewide longitudinal data system” (SLDS) (von Zastrow & Perez, 2024). The most comprehensive SLDSs connect student-level data across a student’s entire education journey and into the workforce. Datasets that track students from early childhood through employment are known as P-20W systems (i.e., pre-kindergarten through postsecondary education and into the workforce). Not all SLDSs link education records to workforce outcomes; however, systems that do often allow stakeholders to link education attainment to employment and wage data.

Since 2002, the federal government has invested $934 million through the ED’s Statewide Longitudinal Data System Grant to help states create their SLDS (Institute of Education Sciences, 2023). Over time, the focus of these grants has shifted from building capacity to connect and store K-12 data to addressing broader policy areas (e.g., workforce outcomes, infrastructure, college and career, etc.). As a result of this federal investment, all 50 states, five territories, and Washington, D.C., have received at least one SLDS grant as of October 2023. In partnership with ED, DOL also supports states through the Workforce Data Quality Initiative (WDQI), which helps states with the development of, or enhancements to, “longitudinal administrative databases that integrate workforce and education data” (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.). One of the WDQI’s listed objectives is to link unemployment insurance wage records and training and employment services data to a state’s SLDS. Since 2011, states have received over $90 million in WDQI grants to enhance their SLDS (Education Commission of the States, 2024). Taken together, the federal government has invested over $1 billion to help states construct SLDSs.

The Education Commission of the States (ECS) recently reviewed publicly available data on state websites to learn more about SLDSs. As of 2024, ECS was able to collect information on 41 states plus Washington, D.C. (von Zastrow & Perez, 2024). They found 33 states had an active SLDS and nine had an SLDS that was “under construction.” Notably, the majority of SLDSs track some employment outcomes for students by linking education records to workforce data. Of the 42 systems that were active or under construction in 2024, ECS found that 35 linked postsecondary education records to workforce data, and 32 linked K-12 and postsecondary records to workforce data (Education Commission of the States, 2024). While ECS could not find data on nine state systems through public websites, each of these states received at least one SLDS grant each.[2]

Labor Market Outcomes in Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems

States often gather labor market outcome data by connecting education records to workforce data obtained as part of the unemployment insurance program. As part of the Social Security Act of 1935, unemployment insurance programs were created to provide wage protection to unemployed individuals based on their previous income. To create these wage records, states must (at a minimum) collect the following data points: social security numbers, total quarterly wages, and employer identification information (Jindal et al., 2015). When states can link education records to wage data, researchers are able to answer critical labor market questions such as:

• How many graduates from the local community college were employed within one year?
• Of the career and technical education concentrators at X high school, who did not go to college after earning a diploma, and how many were employed within two quarters? What was their average income?
• Over the last five years, what was the average annualized earnings for welders in X state? How does that compare to the wages for welders in surrounding states?
• How many students are training to be electricians, plumbers, and machinists at the local community college? What were the employment outcomes over the last five years for graduates in these programs (e.g., employment rates and average earned incomes)?

These are only a few possible use-cases for what can be answered by SLDSs that link K-12, postsecondary, and workforce data; however, as states find more ways to reduce maintenance costs and increase data transfers through automation, it will be possible to link even more disparate data systems together. For example, systems that include occupation projection data (such as occupation growth and unmet labor needs by occupation per year) can show policymakers and college leaders which programs need to produce more (or fewer) graduates to meet local labor market needs.

Examples of Employment and Labor Market Outcome Transparency in Education at the State Level

States should prioritize transparency and regularly report data publicly in easily accessible ways (Wicks & Wirtz, 2024). States with well-established SLDSs have chosen to report labor market outcome data through online, public-facing dashboards. For example,

• Iowa: The Iowa Department of Education reports on community college outcomes through the Iowa Student Outcomes dashboard. Through this dashboard, Iowans can see how many students at the state or individual college completed a program of study between 2018 and 2022 and what the median wages were for those students (Iowa Student Outcomes, 2024).
• Tennessee: Tennessee’s Education to Employment Dashboard provides information on wages by major field and award level, from one to five years after graduation. For example, using this dashboard, Tennesseans can compare the median wages of bachelor’s degree earners in agriculture three years after graduation to the median wages of mechanics with an associate degree five years after graduation (Tennessee Department of Finance & Administration, n.d.).
• California: California’s Cal-PASS Plus reports wage data for high school and college completers while also including additional information, such as whether a CTE student was placed in a job that was closely related to their field of study. Notably, California uses self-reported survey data to report on a closely related field, which limits the practical use of the data for policymakers (Cal-PASS Plus, n.d.).

While an entire report could be written solely on the ways states report labor market outcomes from their SLDSs, it is beyond the scope of this report. The examples of how these three states use wage records are by no means exhaustive; however, they illustrate some of the possibilities (and limitations) of what states can (and should) report to students using standard unemployment insurance wage records.

Limitations of Using Standard Wage Record Data

While the examples above highlight how students can find employment rates and average earnings for recent graduates, they do little to provide more nuanced information that matters to students, businesses, and policymakers at the local level. For example, it is impossible to know in these examples whether median wages were based on part-time, full-time, or more than full-time workloads. Put another way, using standard wage records may show that graduates in a plumbing program from a local community college made $75,000 a year. A prospective student looking at this data may be led to believe that graduates earn $36.05/hour based on a standard 40-hour work week. It could be the case that graduates work an average of 50 hours per week, which would make the average hourly wage $28.84/hour, not including overtime. Further, without collecting occupation data, such as occupation title or Standard Occupation Classification code (SOC code), it is impossible to know whether the wages for plumbing graduates reflect those of plumbers or of some other unrelated occupation.

While the efforts of the ED and DOL have led to widespread adoption of SLDSs that connect education to employment outcomes, there is now a need to further enhance wage record data to better understand and holistically assess labor market outcomes of educational programs.

The Case for Enhancing Unemployment Insurance Wage Records

At a minimum, states are required to collect an employee’s social security number, quarterly wages, and basic employer information to administer unemployment insurance. These data are known as unemployment insurance (UI) wage data and cover roughly 90% of the entire American workforce (Bloomquist, 2025). In some cases, states request that businesses provide additional optional or required data elements. When states expand wage records in this way, the resulting data are commonly referred to as enhanced unemployment insurance wage records (hereafter referred to as “enhanced wage records”).

Currently, there is variability in which additional data elements states choose to adopt when enhancing their wage records. For example, in 2017, Indiana expanded its wage record requirements to include a worker’s occupation (SOC code) and working location (Data Quality Campaign, 2025). This allowed the state to track whether graduates were employed in a related field and where in the state they found employment. Another example: Minnesota collects work location and hours worked (Minnesota SLEDS, n.d.). The addition of collecting hours worked allowed the state to report hourly pay rates and whether employees were working full- or part-time.

According to a recent analysis conducted by Strada and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, at least 28 states have enhanced their wage records systems (Moret, 2025). Enhancements to state wage records were done by including information on some combinations of the following items: occupation (title or SOC code), hourly pay rate, work location, type of worker (e.g., full-time or apprentice), and worker demographics (Bloomquist, 2025; Moret, 2025). Reporting on all these data elements would provide policymakers with the most robust data possible, though requiring all data elements may create burdens on businesses that must report the information. The State of Florida considered this issue while investigating the possibility of enhancing Florida’s wage records (Richard et al., 2023). The research group, headed by the Florida Department of Education, found that adding three new data elements would strike an acceptable balance between the benefits from having strong labor market information with the burden placed on businesses to report the data. The three data elements were: hourly pay rate, primary work location (zip code), and occupation (SOC code).

While Florida’s report recommends including hourly pay rates to the unemployment insurance systems, reporting total quarterly hours paid is likely preferable. For example, states can derive the hourly pay rate by dividing the total quarterly wages by the total quarterly hours paid. This method still allows states to report the average hourly pay rate while also giving them information about the average hours an employee works per week. When collected, these three elements (i.e., total hours paid in a quarter, primary work location by zip code, and occupation by SOC code) provide state policymakers with powerful information that translates to massive benefits for transparency and accountability in education, while still using investments in education to meaningfully address labor market needs at the local level.

How Enhanced Wage Records Increase Transparency and Accountability in Education

As noted, SLDSs linking education records to standard wage data often show whether graduates are employed at some job earning a salary that may or may not be related to their field of study. By enhancing wage records with the three elements mentioned above, states can link students’ educational programs to their actual occupations. Doing so would enable states to evaluate whether students’ jobs are related to the education they received. Currently, students, parents, businesses, and policymakers rely on an implied understanding that the education provided by postsecondary institutions may lead to specific careers in a related field; however, without enhanced wage records that collect SOC code, they are simply working on faith alone. With the addition of SOC codes, states and the federal government can hold postsecondary educational programs accountable to more stringent labor market outcomes, especially workforce development and training programs. For example, by including SOC codes in enhanced wage records, states can track whether postsecondary CTE programs are fulfilling local labor market needs by placing graduates in related high-skill, high-wage, and in-demand occupations.

In addition to outcome transparency, enhancing wage records provides new opportunities to create more specific accountability metrics in education and workforce training grants. Perkins V and WIOA require CTE and certain workforce training to align programs to local labor market needs; however, without enhanced wage records, it is extremely difficult to hold education providers accountable for student outcomes. Put another way, these programs should fulfill the unmet labor needs for in-demand occupations at the local level and, if they are not, then education providers are failing both the student who trained for a good job and the local economy that needed their talents. Beyond workforce training, enhanced wage records open new possibilities for creating employment outcome reporting requirements and accountability metrics through accreditation and as a condition of receiving federal funds (e.g., under Title IV of the Higher Education Act). By leveraging enhanced wage data, the federal government can remove support for programs and institutions that do not deliver a clear ROI for students.

Here are a few use cases of how states could use enhanced wage records to increase transparency and accountability in education:

• A college system wants to identify which training programs offer the strongest ROI in each county.
• A state wants to identify community colleges that are successful in placing students into careers in the skilled trades and share best practices across the college system.
• Flagging programs that fail to provide graduates with full-time employment or competitive wages equal to those of workers in the same occupation in their local area.
• Policymakers want to know whether higher cost programs at state colleges provide a greater ROI.

How Enhanced Wage Records Align Education Investments to Labor Markets

There are clear overlaps between the examples of how enhanced wage records can increase transparency and accountability in education and how the practice better aligns education to the labor market. This is especially necessary when policymakers adopt the view that investments in education must lead to positive labor market outcomes for students. Beyond education, enhanced wage records provide actual labor market information that will benefit businesses looking to invest dollars in local and state economies—crucial information that policymakers need to make the case for those investments.

Currently, standard wage records collect the employer’s Federal Employment Identification Number (FEIN) and then connect it to the related industry through the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). Without enhanced wage records that include occupation or location, all employees—no matter their specific function in a company—are classified within a single industry classification in the same location. The Enhancing Florida’s Wage Records report provides the following example of what this means in practice:

If a student graduates with a degree in marketing and is employed by Publix, without occupational information, it is unclear if they are a cashier, a manager, or using their degree in a marketing role. (Richard et al., 2023, p. 32)

This gap is particularly problematic when one considers that in 2023, Publix employed 130,829 employees in Florida (p. 20). Under Florida’s current system, it is impossible to determine which specific roles employees hold (e.g., marketing, sales, cashier, manager) and where they are working. Enhanced wage records provide a fuller picture of what individual workers do in a company and where they do it.

Right now, labor market data are estimated based on surveys administered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). These surveys are costly to administer, rely on sampling, and often lag behind real economic conditions. Enhanced wage records would replace much of this guesswork by providing actual, administrative data that links individual workers to specific occupations in specific places. Armed with this information, policymakers, colleges, and businesses could more effectively align education and workforce programs with local labor market needs, thereby ensuring that training leads to real jobs and that employers can hire workers with the skills they need.

Federal investments in workforce development and training and CTE are intended to train local workers to meet local labor needs. By including occupation and work location, stakeholders will be able to assess whether investing in a specific program increases the supply of local workers (or whether the workers are leaving the area) and thereby fulfills the unmet labor needs for high-demand occupations. Further, this information is particularly important to workforce development boards and policymakers who can leverage this type of information to attract businesses to invest money in their communities (e.g., when reshoring industries or moving/building factories).

Here are a few examples of how states could use enhanced wage records better to align education with labor markets:

• A state wants to assess the effectiveness of a workforce training grant intended to increase the number of skilled tradesmen in construction-related fields in a three-county area. The state wants to know whether grant recipients entered related fields, worked in the local area, and to what extent the state’s investment met local needs.
• A rural community college and workforce development board are tasked with investigating why recently graduated students are leaving the local community. They compare the average hourly wages for recent graduates in their local community to those of another community college in a metropolitan area.
• A local community college submits a proposal to triple the size of their nursing program, citing a potential partnership with a large hospital system. The college claims that 100% of recent graduates are employed full-time and made higher than average wages for nurses in the local area. The proposal also claims that, by tripling class size, the college can meet the entire unmet labor market need for nurses in the local area. The State Board of Regents needs to review these claims before approving the proposal.

Common Concerns and Rebuttals to Enhancing Wage Records

States and the federal government have considered enhancing wage records for several decades; however, persistent concerns have prevented widespread adoption. This section addresses three of the most pressing concerns and explains why the federal government should promote the enhancement of wage records.

Concern #1: Enhanced wage records will create more government spending and increase the size of government.

Enhancing wage records could reduce the size of government by streamlining data collection processes and equipping policymakers with critical information needed to maximize investments in workforce education. Recall that states have collectively received more than $1 billion in support of this effort from the federal government, and that many already have SLDSs, so most states will not need to invest heavily in upgrading their current data systems. Additionally, enhancing wage records may save the government money by supplanting labor-intensive methods for estimating labor market information with streamlined processes that provide actual labor market data. For example, enhancing wage records could reduce the effort and resources required for BLS to administer the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, thereby saving time and money for federal government officials who create, administer, and analyze survey data, as well as for the employers who must respond to these surveys.

Concern #2: Businesses will need special training to select the correct SOC code, or they will select the wrong one, diminishing the value of the information.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) make it easier and quicker for businesses to identify the correct SOC code for their employees. Certainly, within the first one to two years, businesses will need to invest time in identifying the appropriate SOC codes that match particular job descriptions, but after a few years, employers will have clear alignments to SOC codes that they can refer to annually. Regarding identifying SOC codes, AI chatbots can dramatically reduce the time it takes for businesses to identify the closest aligned SOC code. Employers can simply prompt AI to return the three closest SOC codes based on the employee’s generic job description. Even when employers choose SOC codes that are not perfectly aligned but are within the same 2- or 4- digit grouping, policymakers can still derive important labor market information (Richard et al., 2023).

Concern #3: It will be too expensive for businesses to report enhanced wage records.

While there could be a small initial cost for businesses (mostly during the adoption phase), there is evidence to suggest that businesses may support enhanced wage reporting after they learned about the benefits. In an open letter to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, the Strada Education Foundation’s President argued that widespread adoption of human resource information system platforms has greatly reduced the burden on businesses to report enhanced wage record data (Moret, 2025). Furthermore, as the Florida report found, the average estimated start-up costs for businesses to collect enhanced wage records were between 0.014% and 0.135% of total wages, with an annual ongoing cost between 0.014% and 0.080% (Richard et al., 2023). Even when considering the costs, the Florida Department of Education found that most stakeholders who attended a one-day convening on enhanced wage records supported efforts to adopt enhanced wage records requirements in their state.

Recommendations

To maximize investments in postsecondary education and hold colleges accountable, greater emphasis must be placed on employment and labor market outcomes. Therefore, this research report offers the following recommendations:

Require Employment Outcome Reporting for All Postsecondary Programs That Receive Federal Funding

All states receiving federal funding for postsecondary education must report employment outcomes data publicly and to DOL. Congress should include similar language in the Higher Education Act (HEA), WIOA, and Perkins V to require states receiving funds to report the following data at the program level[3]:

• Percentage of degree completers employed in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after completion.
• Median income for degree completers employed in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after completion.

All states with an active SLDS linked to unemployment insurance wage records should be required to comply with these standards as soon as possible. For states that currently lack the capacity, they should still be eligible to receive federal postsecondary funding on the condition that they make annual progress towards complying with these requirements (within two to three years). Additionally, to ensure reporting consistency and interpretability of outcomes, states must ensure that their SLDS adheres to the Common Education Data Standards (Common Education Data Standards, n.d.).

Congress could also add employment outcomes reporting to accreditation requirements in the HEA. To ensure that higher education puts Americans first, accreditors must focus on employment outcomes in the accreditation process. Only then will higher education begin to meaningfully orient itself towards the labor market, leading students into productive and meaningful careers.

Provide Incentives to States to Adopt Enhanced Wage Records and Report Program Relevant Labor Market Outcomes

Congress should incentivize states to both enhance their wage records and connect these data to education records. Specifically, states must commit to including (at a minimum): occupation by SOC code, total quarterly hours paid, and primary working location by zip code. As a condition of receiving federal education grants, funding mechanisms must be rewritten so that states can receive the full award amounts by reporting greater labor market outcome data at the program level.

Labor market outcome data must advance the goals of specific federal programs that support investments in education. Perkins V and WIOA Title I training services require programs to have direct connections to in-demand occupations. Given this focus, reporting requirements should evaluate whether these education programs are leading students into related occupations. Meanwhile, traditional four-year degrees are often more general and lack clear connections to specific jobs. In the following subsections, this research report outlines differentiated labor market outcome reporting requirements for (1) career and technical education and workforce training programs funded under Perkins V and WIOA, and (2) traditional degree programs that receive federal grants and loans under the Higher Education Act.

2a. Enhanced Career-Related Outcomes Reporting for Perkins V and WIOA Programs

As previously mentioned, postsecondary CTE programs funded by Perkins V and certain programs funded by WIOA must train students for occupations aligned to local labor market needs. To evaluate whether programs are meeting this explicit purpose, states should report the following outcomes at the program level in addition to those presented in the first recommendation:

For Perkins V, report:

• Percentage of CTE concentrators employed in an occupation related to their program of study in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after program completion.[4]
• Median earnings for CTE concentrators employed in an occupation related to their program of study in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after program completion.
• Average hourly pay rate for CTE concentrators in an occupation related to their program of study in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after program completion.
• Percentage of CTE concentrators in an occupation related to their program of study whose earnings exceed the median earnings for workers with a high school diploma (aged 25-34) in their local area in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after program completion.

For WIOA, report:

• Percentage of program participants employed in an occupation related to their training services in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after program exit.
• Median earnings for program participants employed in an occupation related to their training services in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after program exit.
• Average hourly pay rate for program participants in an occupation related to their training services in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after program exit.
• Percentage of program participants in an occupation related to their training services whose earnings exceed the median earnings for workers with a high school diploma (aged 25–34) in their local area in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after program exit.

2b. Enhanced Labor Market Reporting for Traditional Degree Programs

Traditional degree programs (e.g., associate, bachelor’s, and graduate degrees) are not usually intended to lead to a single, easily identifiable, occupation. Given the broad nature of certain fields (e.g., humanities and social sciences), program-level accountability metrics should emphasize employment and earnings outcomes relative to the broader labor market. As such, states should report the following outcomes at the program-level in addition to those presented in the first recommendation:

• Median hourly pay rate for degree completers in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after completion.
• Percentage of associate and bachelor’s degree completers whose earnings exceed the median earnings of workers with a high school diploma (aged 25-34) in their local area in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after completion.
• Percentage of graduate degree completers whose earnings exceed the median earnings for workers with a bachelor’s degree (aged 25-34) in their local area in the 2^nd and 4^th quarters after completion.

Beyond reporting specific labor market outcomes, Congress should also amend the Higher Education Act, as a condition of Title IV eligibility, to require institutions to disclose the types of occupations their graduates enter after completion at the program level. Institutions could report the top occupations (e.g., five or ten) entered by program graduates using detailed SOC codes, or by reporting broader occupational groupings that illustrate the range of career pathways associated with the degree. Given the variety of ways colleges could meaningfully report occupational outcomes, Congress should delegate authority to ED, in consultation with DOL, to establish reporting standards through rulemaking.

3. Revise Perkins V and WIOA Oversight and Accountability by Reporting Direct Employment and Labor Market Outcomes

Comprehensive SLDSs allow states to assess the direct impacts of program interventions and investments on workers and the workforce, both with respect to specific programs and in the context of their overall workforce development strategies. DOL and ED should revise the reporting requirements for Unified and Combined WIOA State Plans to leverage the evidence from improved SLDSs to demonstrate the impacts of the plans moving forward.

Additionally, all grant programs requirements under Perkins V and WIOA should be revised to include the evidence that these system improvements enable. Specifically, grant recipients should be obligated to provide evidence that the specific interventions they propose are achieving the results they promise. This information should be available as part of the reporting related to the grant and made publicly available to potential applicants and prospects for these programs on a timely and regular basis.

To implement this recommendation, a combination of rulemaking, guidance letters, and revisions to grant processes will be necessary.

• Rulemaking about state plans: The required elements for State Plans must be revised to incorporate the capacity of SLDSs to report the direct impacts of proposed plans. DOL should engage in rulemaking under WIOA’s performance accountability and state plan authority to require states to report employment and labor market outcomes derived from enhanced wage records. ED should develop similar rules under Perkins V to require comparable reporting as part of federal program performance and accountability requirements, ensuring that federal investments in education are linked to specific employment and labor market outcomes. The new requirements will strengthen the DOL and ED’s ability to provide appropriate oversight and create accountability for state programs.
• Rulemaking about competitive grants: ED and DOL should revise competitive grant evaluation and award processes to require applicants to use enhanced employment outcome metrics to evaluate program success. Initially, this requirement may be implemented through incentives, such as prioritized consideration, as states implement their SLDSs, but priority should be given to grant applicants who meet the new standards. Formally revising the standards will provide better and more transparent evidence about the public return on investment in workforce programs, as well as creating an incentive and justification for full adoption of enhanced reporting systems by states.
• Prioritization and incentivizing use of enhanced data: ED and DOL should develop new workforce grant opportunities to incentivize recipients to explore employment and labor market outcomes using data derived from enhanced wage records. Additionally, DOL should prioritize WDQI grants to states that do not yet connect unemployment insurance wage records to their SLDS to accelerate and expedite adoption.

• Interim guidance to states and grant applicants: ED and DOL should provide guidance to states and prospective grant applicants through guidance letters to explain and clarify the new standards and opportunities, especially during the period while rulemaking unfolds. This guidance should include best practices for collecting, integrating, and publishing data while preserving individual privacy. These letters can serve to encourage states to enhance unemployment insurance wage records. For example, a recent guidance letter on WIOA State Plans from DOL encouraged states to enhance wage records in preparation for Workforce Pell Grants (U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, 2026).

Conclusion

Over two decades, the federal government has invested over $1 billion (collectively) across all 50 states, five territories, and Washington, D.C., to help build SLDSs. Today, most SLDSs link education records to wage data, enabling most states to report employment outcomes for graduates, such as median income and employment rates at the program level. The information, made possible linking education records to wage data, can help the federal and state governments build policies to manage their investment in higher education and help students avoid being saddled with high debts and a degree that provides little to no financial benefit to them.

To put Americans first, postsecondary institutions must be accountable for ensuring that students benefit from their education. This accountability starts by ensuring that states and institutions document and share the market outcomes for program alumni. As a condition of receiving federal funding for postsecondary education, policymakers should amend critical legislation (e.g., Perkins V, WIOA, and HEA) to require states to report on the employment outcomes of graduates. This data must be provided publicly in a way that the average citizen can easily understand while also meeting the needs of the federal government to shape and set policy.

Lastly, policymakers should create new formula funding in federal postsecondary grants to incentivize states to adopt enhanced wage records (i.e., total hours worked in the quarter, primary working location by zip code, and occupation by SOC code) and connect key data elements to student records through their SLDSs. By reporting labor market outcomes that link a student’s field of study to their actual career at the local level, institutions can play a significant role in preparing Americans for in-demand occupations after college. Additionally, equipped with this data, policymakers can leverage their state’s postsecondary education systems in meaningful ways that bolster local economies and provide good jobs for American workers.

[1] Note: This research report distinguishes between employment outcomes and labor market outcomes. Employment outcomes describe whether program completers are employed and their earnings following completion, without reference to specific occupations, their education program, or other local labor market factors. Labor market outcomes evaluate whether program completers are employed in occupations related to their field of study and earn wages that are competitive within the local labor market.

[2] Note: The nine states include: Alaska, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

[3] Note: Recommendation 1 uses the terms “degree completers” and “after completion;” however, WIOA and Perkins V track different cohorts for their indicators of performance. For example, Perkins V tracks postsecondary “CTE concentrators... after program completion” and WIOA tracks “program participants who are in unsubsidized employment…after exit from the program.” While the language may differ for specific federal programs, the idea of establishing strong connections between education and employment and labor market outcomes is present throughout.

[4] Note: Policymakers can use the CIP-SOC crosswalk to assess whether a job (SOC) linked to a specific education program (CIP).