Do Postsecondary Training Programs Respond to Changes in the Labor Market?

The United States labor market has seen dramatic shifts in its occupational composition over the past few decades. Employment and wages have grown for workers at both the high and low end of the skill distribution, while those in the middle have suffered. Community colleges have historically acted as suppliers of middle-skill jobs and drivers of upward socioeconomic mobility. The author studies the connection between community colleges and the labor market by focusing on the occupations for which community colleges train students. The author leverages an administrative dataset encompassing all students, faculty and course offerings in all California community colleges since 1992. He links program-level information on enrollment, completion, faculty hiring, and course availability to occupation-level information on employment, wages, and education from the Census. The author finds evidence of a modest link between occupational employment change and the growth of degrees and certificates. He also finds significant heterogeneity across occupations in terms of the connection between employment and awards. [SREE documents are structured abstracts of SREE conference symposium, panel, and paper or poster submissions.]