Tracking University of Wyoming Graduates Into
the Wyoming Work-force

Prominent in the ongoing discussion of employment opportunities in the state of Wyoming is the viability of University of Wyoming graduates finding work within the state that matches their skills and educational credentials. Higher education, financed partly by state funds, is an investment in human capital that at the present time is perhaps not being fully realized by the state, i.e., out-migration of UW graduates due to the lack of suitable employment opportunities.

The effects of this perceived loss of human capital cannot be appraised without first proving that it does, indeed, exist. Until now, an extensive study tracking UW graduates into the Wyoming work-force has not been attempted. By identifying how many students are showing-up in the Wyoming work-force and in what job classifications they are finding work in, a clearer picture of Wyoming's college educated work-force can be had. This information will no doubt assist future planners in both the state and university sectors.

Although this study focuses on graduates and their relationship to the Wyoming work-force, it should be prominently noted that university education produces gains for society that cannot be measured in annual earnings. The benefits are vast and complex. Job training is by no means the sole function, and in some people's view, not even the primary function, of higher education. But that debate is beyond the scope of this study. A profile of 11 years of UW graduates is presented, and their progress into, or out of, the Wyoming work force is the central focus of this research.

Tom Gallagher, in his capacity as manager of the Research & Planning Section of the Employment Resources Division, initiated contact with the University of Wyoming's Department of Sociology which resulted in the development, funding, and completion of this study. Wayne Gosar, formerly of Research & Planning, compiled and refined the employment data provided by the state (he also patiently answered many questions). The University's Office of Institutional Analysis, and the Office of Registration and Records provided data on UW graduates. Without the cooperation of everyone involved, this study could not have been completed. Professor Garth Massey (Sociology) is the faculty advisor on this project, and Professors Audie Blevins, Burke Grandjean, and Gary Hampe also contributed time and guidance. The Department of Sociology provided a computer (somewhat low on RAM) and a place to work. The research was done over a four month period, June-September, of 1995 by Steven Butler, graduate student in Sociology. The State of Wyoming fully funded the study and owns this report as per contract number: 06SC0251434.

The Population

The population under study is 11 years of University of Wyoming graduates earning a degree from 1983 through 1993. Numbering 20,498 students, this inventory is a complete listing including 15,676 students receiving bachelor degrees, 3,457 receiving master degrees, 701 taking J.D. degrees, and 663 receiving Ph.Ds¹. The University of Wyoming Office of Registration and Records and the UW Office of Institutional Analysis gathered and provided the data.

Due to individual students taking 2 or even 3 degrees, the original data set contained 22,508 student entries². The last degree taken by an individual student, chosen chronologically, was regarded as the entry to be included in the final data set. Listed by Social Security Number (SSN), other student data include major field of study, degree type, month/year graduated, sex, grade point average (GPA), and resident status upon graduation.

Wyoming's Research & Planning Section of the Employment Resources Division provided a second data set containing all members of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) covered work-force in the state of Wyoming from 1992 through 1994³. Twelve quarters of employment data, including quarterly wages, employer identification number, and 4 digit Standard Industrial Classification Code (SIC) of each individual employee are present in the data set provided by Research & Planning. All of these variables are listed for up to 4 employers in any given quarter.

By matching the UW data set, graduates of UW 1983-1993, against the employment and wage data for 1992-1994, we are able to determine how many UW graduates of the study period were employed in the UI covered work-force of the target years. We can also pinpoint the industry in which they worked and their quarterly wages.

A profile of the population -- Graduates All

From 1983-1993, the University of Wyoming graduated 10,742 males (52.4%) and 9756 females (47.6%). Frequencies for year graduated range from 1,448 students in 1983 to 2,295 students in 1993. The mean GPA of these graduates is 3.14, with a median of 3.16. More than half, 52.2%, have a SSN beginning with 520--meaning they registered for a Social Security Card in the state of Wyoming. Coming in second is Colorado with 7.1%, then Nebraska with 4.3%, and then California with 3.2% and Illinois with 2.5%.

By far, the most frequently chosen major of the overall group is Life Long Learning and Instruction (all teaching degrees), comprising 20.1% of the entire student population. Students majoring in a branch of engineering come in second with 11%. Business majors come in third with 8.3% (Marketing & Management majors are collapsed into the category of Business). Aside from Accounting majors with 4.1%, none of the remaining majors garners more than 4% of the population. The chart, "Major of UW Graduates, 1983-1993", presents UW graduates by their majors.

Splitting the file "Graduates All" by the type of degree taken by a student yields the following statistics:

Bachelor Degree -- n=15,676. The male/female split changes little from the overall population: Male=50.2%; Female=49.8%. GPA drops slightly, down to a mean of 3.02 and a median of 3.01. Those students with SSNs from Wyoming increases some, from 52.2% of the overall population to 57.6% of those with Bachelor's. Those majoring in LLI grows to 24%.
Master Degree -- n=3,475. The male/female split changes to 55.5% male and 44.5% female. GPA increases substantially: mean=3.659; median=3.710. SSNs from within Wyoming go down to 36%. Learning & Human Development (LHD), an education major, takes over the most frequently chosen field of study with 10.2%. Master of Business shares the second most frequent slot with Master of LLI, both at 8.9%. Only two other majors reach more than 4% of the pop.: Political Science=6.6%; Geology=4.5%.
Doctoral Degree -- n=663. The male/female split changes substantially: male=72.5%; female=27.5%. GPA increases slightly to a mean of 3.727 and a median of 3.780. SSNs from Wyoming go down to 20.4% while Colorado looses it second place slot to California with 7.5%. As far as field of major goes, LHD increases to 28.2%, Geology increases to 8.9%, and Psychology goes to 7.4%. Chemistry is next with 7.5% and then Zoology with 6.3%.
Jurist Doctorate -- n=701. Males outnumber females 66.5% to 33.5%. The mean GPA is 2.75 while the median is 2.67. SSNs from Wyoming are at 42.5% and Colorado is the only other state with more than 4% of the total with 10.6%.

Graduates in the Work-force

The data set compiled by the Research & Planning Section of Wyoming's Employment Resources Division contains 3 years of employment and wage information dating from the first quarter of 1992 through the fourth quarter of 1994. Every person working for a UI covered employer during these 3 years is included if they earned wages in any or all quarters of this period. Excluded from the data are federal employees, the self-employed, and workers employed by companies or individuals who are not covered by Unemployment Insurance. Federal employees make up about 3.8% of the total Wyoming work-force (n=7,481). Research & Planning estimates that 80%-85% of Wyoming's total work force is included in this data set.

Of the 20,498 graduates under study, 9,308 or 45.4% appeared in the State's employment data. This file will be called "Hits." The 11,190 (55.6%) who didn't show up in the Wyoming work-force during 92-94 will be called "NoHits."

Trying to infer why, based on particular motives, an individual graduate shows up or doesn't show up in the employment and wage data of Wyoming, from the information contained in these 2 files, is problematic to say the least. Nowhere in this data has the question: "Why did you accept employment in such and such a field in such and such a location?" been asked of the individual graduate. The range of possible answers is infinite:

My Dad's cousin owns a hardware store in Casper/Ft. Collins/St. Louis and offered me a job.
There are better ski slopes in Colorado.
The fishing is better in Wyoming. . . .

The list of possible personal and professional justifications could go on forever. And it's also possible that some of these graduates don't appear in Wyoming's employment data because they decided to get more education, here or out of state. Some could be having children and raising families with no intention of working. Some could have joined the military. Some, no doubt, have died. But we can look for trends and structural factors that have an effect on employment behaviors of UW graduates.

The table, "Wyoming Work-force Participants by Gender, Degree, and GPA", compares those who show up in the Wyoming work-force to those who don't. The first statistic is sex. Although females are only 47.6% of the overall population (Graduates-All), they make up over half of the Hits file (53.2%). Conversely, males have a clear majority in the NoHits file, suggesting that males are more likely to either take jobs out of state, take jobs that are non-UI covered, continue on in school for graduate degrees (borne out by the significantly larger number of males taking post graduate degrees in this data), or unemployed.

Degree Type

The second category is Degree Type. This section shows that Hits are more likely to have Bachelor degrees and less likely to have advanced degrees than NoHits. Those earning Master degrees are more likely not to show up in the Wyoming work-force, while earners of Ph.D. degrees are more than twice as likely not to show up in the Wyoming employment data. Those receiving Law degrees split close to half and half with just a slight advantage to appear in the NoHits file.

Work-force Location and GPA

The next section reports the GPAs of each group. It shows higher mean and median GPAs in the Hits group even though in the previous category we saw that students earning graduate degrees (with much higher GPAs than the general population) are less likely to be in the Hits group. By running the mean GPA of all students receiving only Bachelor degrees (thereby nullifying the effect of the graduate students pulling up the mean GPA of the overall population), we get a mean of 3.01. This demonstrates that the GPAs of grad students are pulling up the overall GPA by .13 points.

So we are confronted with fact that those who show up in the Wyoming work-force in the target years have a higher mean GPA than the overall population even though this category contains a smaller ratio of mean-inflating grad students than the NoHits group. This seems to indicate that Bachelor degree holders in the Hits file must have a greater mean GPA than those with Bachelor degrees in the NoHits file. Such is exactly the case: Hits with Bachelor degrees, mean GPA=3.048; NoHits with Bachelor degree, mean GPA=2.991. Why should this be the case?

We know that the Hits file contains more SSNs issued in Wyoming (67.4% of Hits file) than does the NoHits file (48.5% of NoHits file). This would lead one to suspect that perhaps graduates with SSNs issued in Wyoming are pulling-up the mean GPA by virtue of having higher GPAs than those with out of state SSNs. By running the mean GPA of Hits, filtered by SSNs issued in Wyoming and SSNs not issued in Wyoming, and then running the same process on the file NoHits; we can see if the increased frequency of Wyoming issued SSNs is a factor in the GPA discrepancy between the 2 files.

What we find is that the frequency of Wyoming issued SSNs is a factor, but not in the suspected fashion. In the Hits file, those with out-of-state SSNs have a higher mean GPA (3.124) than do those who were issued an in-state SSN (3.012). So actually the out-of-staters pulled up the GPA of the in-staters, even though they are substantially fewer in numbers: out-of-state SSNs=2,418; in-state SSNs=4,993. In the file NoHits we find that in-staters have the higher mean GPA (3.003) than do the out-of-staters (2.984). But in the NoHits file, out-of-staters (and their mean-deflating GPAs) are in the majority: out-of-state N=4,145 vs. in-state N=3,902. And even though Wyoming issued SSNs have the higher mean GPA in NoHits, it is lower than the mean GPA of either category in the Hits file.

Summarizing these findings, we can say that out-of-state holders of Bachelor degrees, who wind up in the Wyoming work-force of the target years, have a higher GPA (3.124) than their in-state fellow alumni (3.012) and also their out-of-state classmates who don't appear in the Wyoming work-force (2.984). As for holders of Bachelor degrees with Wyoming issued SSNs, we can say there is little difference in mean GPA whether they show up in the work-force (3.012) or don't show up in the work force (3.003).

College Major and Work-force Participation

The graph, "Field of Major by Worked or Not Worked in Wyoming 1992-1994", portrays the overall population of UW graduates, separated into their field of major, and their resulting appearance or absence from the employment data of 1992-1994. Some of the classifications of majors have been combined into a single category. For instance, six different majors in the field of Agricultural Economics along with four different majors in the field of Agriculture proper were collapsed in the overall category of Agriculture; seven different Art majors were collapsed into the category of Art; 12 different Marketing and Management majors are compiled with 14 other Business majors under the heading of Business Administration. This is by no means all of the collapsing that went on, but listing them all here is inappropriate. One major, LLI, is split into Elementary Education and LLI, since Elementary Ed alone was such a large percentage of the Graduates-All file: 8.8%. If anyone is interested in obtaining data on any majors in desegregated form, it still exists in the data set.

From viewing the chart it's easy to see that graduates of some majors are much more likely to appear in the employment data than others. Engineering graduates are more than twice as likely not to appear in the Wyoming employment data. Breaking these down into the various engineering fields, we find that civil engineers are the most likely to show up in the employment data (42%) while electrical engineers and chemical engineers are the least likely to appear (only 19% each). Other engineering specialties break down as follows: mechanical engineers=24% and petroleum engineers=23%. Geology is another major with a large majority of graduates not showing up in the work-force data of 1992-1994. Only 24% of the 376 geology graduates of 1983-1993 show up in the employment data. For Chemistry majors, the numbers are even lower: 17.5% show up in the Wyoming work-force; only 26% of Biochemistry majors appear; 29% of Plant Science majors appear; 26% of Pharmacy majors are identified. In fact, Natural Science majors are the only "hard science" majors to have numbers over 50% for having worked in Wyoming 92-94: 53% vs. 47%.

Business majors also demonstrate a clear tendency not to appear (38%). Computer Science puts up similar numbers with 33% showing up. Animal Science majors are at 38%. Law is at 43%. LLI and Elementary Education, both teaching degrees, demonstrate a clear tendency in the other direction: showing up in the employment data. Together, 63% of them are in the work data. Calculated separately, they are virtually in the same proportion. Since teachers are such a large proportion of graduates, taking all teaching majors out of the data results in substantially lowering the overall proportion of graduates showing up in the Wyoming employment data. The mean for appearing drops from 45.4% to 41.4%. Aside from teachers, majors within the social sciences, humanities, and physical health fields (excluding pharmacy) are most likely to appear in the work-force of 92-94.

Year Graduated and Work-force Participation

The chart, "Worked or Not Worked in Wyoming 1992-94 by Year Grad", represents the file Graduates-All divided up by year graduated and then ranked as having appeared or not appeared in the employment data. The most notable feature is the steady increase through time, from 83-92, of graduates appearing in the work data. Those graduating in the early and mid-eighties are substantially less likely to appear than those graduating in the late eighties or early nineties. One factor for this consistent increase through the 11 years is the fact that the University of Wyoming has graduated more students each year. But the number of graduates appearing in the work-force data cannot be totally explained by this increase in total graduates. From 1983 to 1993 the total number of graduates has increased by a factor of 1.58, but over this same period of time, the number of graduates appearing in the work-force has increased by a factor of 3.32.

There are some possible explanations of this phenomena:

UW graduates are filtering out of the Wyoming work-force over time.
Some graduates who have been in the work-force for a while, are returning to school for more education.
The recession of the early eighties resulted in fewer job openings in Wyoming.
Newly graduated students are reluctant to relocate out-of-state.
Not finding work within their chosen careers, new graduates are simply taking any kind of work available locally and then later on finding work in their respective fields out-of-state.

Earnings Data

In 1992, Wyoming's Research & Planning Section of the Employment Resources Division reported the average annual earnings of a UI covered employee in the state at $21,215. Since the state receives data on individual employees in the form of quarterly earnings and, as such, is unable to distinguish definitively between part- and full-time employees, their income figures include every UI covered employee in the state. The average annual earnings for all UW graduates working for UI covered employers in 1992, is $18,258, or $2,957 less than employees in the state as a whole. For all three years under study, 1992-94, the mean earnings of UW grads drops to $17,877. One factor, no doubt, that figures into these unexpected subordinate earnings for college graduates, is the differences in length of time in the work-force of the two populations being compared. In computing the mean earnings for all state workers, the state's population includes workers who have possibly been in the work world for 40 to 50 years, but the UW graduate population only goes back to 1983. To illustrate: by running the mean earnings of those who graduated from 1983 to 1987 (having had at least an opportunity to be in the work force for 4 years, and up to a possible 12 years), we come up with a mean annual income of almost $24,000. The chart, "Histogram of Average Annual Earnings", depicts earnings by years in the work force, clearly shows how big a factor "time in the work-force" can be when considering earnings. The income figures for the UW population also include any one graduate working at up to 4 different jobs per quarter (another factor obscuring the distinction between full and part-time employment).

Because one of the goals of this study is to track UW graduates as they pursue careers in the Wyoming work-force, a distinction between grads who are marginally attached to the work-force and those who are more than marginally attached to the work-force was established. The chosen criteria is any individual who averages earnings below $1020 per quarter (this figure is equal to 20 hours a week at minimum wage--$4.25 hour). Although employed, these individuals are only marginally attached to the work-force, and for the purposes of this study will be judged part-time. This is a troublesome distinction to make since we can't say whether these individuals are involuntarily part-time (pursuing a career but finding no full-time work in their field) or voluntarily part-time. But from this point on, all wage figures will include only those judged to be more than marginally attached employees by the above criteria.

The histogram shows average annual earnings for graduates judged to be more than marginally attached to the Wyoming work-force between 1992-94.

Evident from the chart is that a great many graduates are making very little money. Some factors that may be responsible for these low average earnings are:

Being in the work-force for such a short time.
Grads staying on at jobs they held while they were in school (low skill, low paying service industries).
Grads who continue on for graduate degrees and work enough to be above the $1,020 per quarter criteria for part-time employment.
Few entry level positions commensurate with educational level are available to new graduates.

The graph, "Mean and Median Annual Earnings by Year Graduated", shows the mean and median income of graduates by year graduated from UW. The relationship between time in the work-force and greater earnings is clearly significant (when correlating average annual earnings with year graduated a coefficient of -.3636 is attained; when running these same variables and controlling for the effects of GPA, the coefficient increases to -.3731; when isolating "Bachelor degree only" graduates and thereby removing the effects of type of degree taken, the coefficient rises to -.3992⁴. These numbers indicate a moderate and significant relationship between year graduated and average annual earnings. Also noticeable is the lesser value of median as compared to mean in the years 1991-1993. This discrepancy indicates a skew caused by outlying values at the upper end of wage earners in these three years. Since reporting average or mean wages when the data being analyzed contains numerous outliers (as this data does), the median earning is a truer representation of how most individuals are doing. So throughout most of the rest of this presentation, the median income will be reported, when possible, to relate earnings.

The earnings data were also broken down by type of degree taken by graduates: Bachelor, Masters, Ph.D., and JD (see "Median Annual Wages by Degree Type"). The results are dramatic! There is a $10,973 difference between the median earnings of graduates receiving bachelor and those receiving master degrees. The difference between Masters and Ph.D. is substantial as well: an increase of $7,039. Graduates taking Law degrees are just slightly below those with Masters degrees with an annual median income of $26,599, but this figure may be misleading since many attorneys go into private practice or work for small firms that don't require Unemployment Insurance (hence, they don't show up in these data).

Earnings were also correlated with GPA, but found to be only weakly related when controlling for the effects of degree type and year graduated.

The various majors with their median earnings are computed and shown in the two charts (see "Median Annual Earnings by Major of UW Graduates (Bachelor degree)" and "Median Annual Earnings by Major of UW Graduates (Master, Ph.D., JD degree)"). Because this study looks at graduates pursuing their careers, and career opportunities aren't always found immediately upon graduation, graduates leaving school after 1988 are not included in this analysis. All graduates included in these charts have had an opportunity to be in the work force for at least 3 years and not over 11 years since graduation. Any one field of major must have had a frequency of over 10 cases to be included. The first chart includes only those earning a Bachelor degree in their chosen field, while the second chart includes only graduates earning Masters, Ph.D. or JD degrees.

Where are UW Graduates in the Work-force?

The chart, "Standard Industrial Classification of Grads (1994) and Wyoming Work-force (1992)", depicts the location of UW grads of 1983-1990 as of the 1st quarter of 1994, along with the general working population of the state in 1992 (latest figures that are available as of this writing). The year 1990 is chosen as the cut-off date so as to allow grads a possibility of 3 years in the work-force. The U.S. Standard Industrial Classification collected by Research & Planning is used to create the categories.

UW graduates are overwhelming found in the Service sector of Wyoming's economy (this includes many of the public sector jobs). The General work-force in the state has only 20% employed in the service sector while UW graduates are found there at a percentage of 63%. Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) is the only other category in which UW graduates are found at a greater percentage than the general working public.

The table, "Industrial Location of Graduates of Various Majors in the Wyoming Work-force of 1992-1994", shows where individual majors show up in the work-force. Those majors with fewer frequencies than 10 in any given industrial classification are not included in the table since they are lacking enough numbers to be considered significant.

The table shows a clear tendency for UW graduates to show up in the public sector; of the 59 job classification entries listed in the table, 39 are in the public sector (66%). And 28 of the 39 public sector entries are in schools: Colleges and Universities=14; Elementary and Secondary=11; Junior Colleges=3. Some of the majors, like Teaching and Speech/Language (SPPA), you would expect to find in the school systems, but others are somewhat of a surprise: Accounting-- Colleges and Universities (C&U) is the second most frequent work place; Agriculture--Elementary and Secondary (E&S) is the number one work place; Animal Science--C&U is number one; Business--C&U is number one; Nursing--Junior Colleges is number two; Physical Health (PEHE)-- E&S is number one; Political Science--C&U is first choice; Social Work--E&S is number one.

Conclusions

The easiest conclusion to be drawn from this research project is that further research in the area of employment and its relationship to education in Wyoming should be pursued aggressively. This statement probably sounds familiar to this paper's audience . . . isn't more research what all researchers suggest? Nonetheless, empirical information is the preferable foundation on which to construct economic and educational planning. This project is only a first step in the process of describing and analyzing the Wyoming job market for college graduates. Similar studies at the Junior College level throughout the state would provide interesting comparative data.

Are UW graduates filtering out of the work-force over time? The graph, " Worked or Not Worked in Wyoming 1992-94 by Year Grad", seems to indicate that might be taking place. And if Wyoming is loosing, in significant numbers, its educated and experienced work-force, the loss in human capital could be negatively impacting the entire economy of the state. But with the data gathered in this project, it cannot be definitively stated that graduates are leaving over time. Without data on those who are working in the state either for themselves, or for non-UI covered employers, no truly definitive statement can responsibly be made. Yet it does raise serious questions both for the state and the educational system. Over half, 55.6% of UW's graduates from 1983-1993 don't show up in the UI covered work-force in the years 1992- 1994. Is Wyoming falling-short in creating white collar career positions? Are white collar wages in Wyoming uncompetitive with other states? Is this kind of out-migration true of other states and other universities? Is the low cost of university education at UW being exploited by both residents and non-residents? What kind of an in-migration of college graduates from other states does Wyoming experience? Should state boundaries even be a part of the discussion of higher education? These are all questions that deserve serious consideration.

We can see from this research that some majors are more likely to show up in the employment data than others. Social Work majors are more than twice as likely to show up in Wyoming as not. Teaching, Psychology, Sociology, Nursing, LHD, Home Economics, Arts and Sciences DN, Art, and Administration of Justice majors are being found in the state at the greatest frequency. Education, Social Science, and Humanities majors are overall more likely to appear in the employment data than are Business, Professional, and "Hard Science" majors (other than Nursing majors). This brings up the question of how much money is being spent by the state on any given major, and hence, what kind of return does it get on its investment. With so many graduates working in the public sector, perhaps more university curriculum in all majors, but particularly in the Social Science and Humanities areas, might be more closely attuned to careers in that area.

The involuntarily under-employed and unemployed are impossible to isolate in a study such as this, but they, no doubt, exist and affect the outcome of studies like this one. How many of the low waged employees that are termed "marginally attached to the work-force," are graduates who would be working full-time if they could find full-time work? How many are not showing up in the Wyoming employment data because they simply can't find a job? We can't tell from this data, but future studies might consider sampling techniques to answer these important question. Sampling could also answer many questions about those who are working in-state, but are not listed on the UI covered employment roles.

Anyone with inquiries about this report may contact Tom Gallagher to have their questions referred to Steven Butler.

1 Six cases were inadvertently deleted at a point in the analysis that made retrieving them impractical.

2 There were also many unexplained repeat entries containing identical data which were deleted.

3 This data set does not include Federal Government employees in the state which were reported to be 3.8% of Wyoming's work-force in the 1992 Annual Covered Employment and Wages published in 1994 by Research & Planning. Neither does it include members of the work-force not covered by unemployment insurance, estimated by Research & Planning to be 15% to 20% of the work-force in the state.

4 The correlation coefficients are negative because as year graduated goes up, earning go down. This basically expresses the concept that as possible years in the work-force goes up, so do earnings. All of the correlations are significant at the .001 level.

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Last modified on October 24, 2001 by Valerie A. Davis.

Tracking University of Wyoming Graduates Into the Wyoming Work-force

Tracking University of Wyoming Graduates Into
the Wyoming Work-force