The Storm Before the Calm: The Immediate Post-College Transition and Long-Term Labor Market Outcomes

• In Event: Unpacking the Education-to-Labor-Market Transition and Its Implications for Inequality

Abstract

Authors: Judith Scott-Clayton (TC, Columbia Univ), Veronica Minaya (TC, Columbia Univ), CJ Libassi (TC, Columbia University), & Joshua Thomas (Columbia University)

Using administrative data on college leavers from a large, urban, public college system linked to quarterly wage data and unemployment claims data, we provide a new window into early labor market “churn” over time and across different types of college leavers. We focus intensively on the first six quarters immediately before and after leaving college, and then examine how this period relates to summary measures of employment and earnings five and ten years later. The granularity of our data enable us to provide new measures of time to first job, first job quality (including measures of industry-major match, employer size, and employer average earnings), job mobility, the connections between during- and post-college employers, and the prevalence of economic insecurity. We examine transitions separately for different types of college leavers (two-year completers, two-year non-completers, four-year completers, and four-year non-completers), and examine variations across economic conditions and student demographics. We then use regression analysis to assess how early transition outcomes relate to earnings five and ten years post-graduation, controlling for student attributes (e.g., demographics), college, cohort, and major fixed effects, and detailed measures of college experiences, attainment, and performance (e.g. credits accumulated, last known GPA, and in-school work experience). 

We presented a preliminary version of this paper at the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) conference in March 2025. That version focused specifically on bachelor’s degree graduates from a limited set of cohorts (for whom we have data on family income), and focused on the role of initial job transitions in explaining longer term gaps in earnings for students from higher and lower-income backgrounds. The new paper will examine similar metrics, but for a wider population of college leavers, including sub-baccalaureate completers and non-completers, and over a much longer span of time.

Author

• Judith Scott-Clayton, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author