Where Do Oregon Higher Education Graduates Work and What Do They Earn?

November 12, 2025

We’ve passed another graduation season. Attending a couple graduations recently and looking out onto the sea of creatively adorned caps shading bright, hopeful faces made me think about those places all those freshly minted graduates will go. These bittersweet transitions evoke these words written by Dr. Seuss from his final book. “You won’t lag behind because you’ll have the speed. You’ll pass all the gang and soon take the lead. Wherever you fly you’ll be best of the best. Wherever you go, you’ll top all the rest…. Oh, the places you’ll go”! 

Back in Dr. Seuss’ time, we could only wonder where graduates did go when they left college and transitioned into the workforce. There might have been an alumni association that kept track of some graduates and had anecdotes about where graduates ended up after college. But there wasn’t comprehensive information about all the places, the locations, earnings, or industries where those graduates have gone. 

In today’s labor market, a couple sources of information on outcomes by degree are available. 

Earnings Outcomes for Oregon Degree Earners from HECC

The Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC) produces enrollment, completer, and outcome data for Oregon. There are detailed statistics available regarding many demographic variables, as well as earnings data published for graduates who have earnings covered by unemployment insurance in Oregon. Data are available for Oregon’s community colleges, public universities and even data regarding enrollment and completions for many private career schools. 

Private Career Schools

Enrollment at private career schools rose by 32%, climbing from 19,086 in 2017-2018 to 25,224 in the 2023-2024 academic year. The number of students earning certificates or diplomas rose by 31% over those five years. In the most recent year, one-half of those were enrolled in insurance or real estate career areas. Cosmetology accounted for one-in-six private career school enrollees. The truck and bus drivers / commercial vehicle operator career area accounted for 7% of those enrolled in private career schools. Self-reported demographic data shows that there were slightly more women certificate and diploma earners in the largest categories – insurance, and real estate. Women completers greatly outnumbered men in aesthetician / skin care specialist; phlebotomy technician / phlebotomist; nail technician, manicurist; cosmetologist; and massage therapist. Men outnumbered women certificate and diploma earners in truck and bus drivers / commercial vehicle operator; bicycle mechanic; computer programmer; and airline / commercial / professional pilot and flight crew career areas. 

Public Universities

Enrollment totaled 123,984 at Oregon’s public universities in 2023-2024, which was a 5% decrease over the decade. On the HECC interactive dashboard, there are many data sets regarding student enrollment, completions and degree earners, majors, affordability and financial aid, and retention rates among others. Focusing on employment statistics, data are available for five years post-graduation for classes from 2007-2008 through 2017-2018 graduation cohorts and 10 years post-graduation for graduation year 2007-2008 through 2012-2013 cohorts. Oregon graduates from the 2017-2018 class had average earnings ranging from $45,500 for English language / literature graduates to $108,000 for legal professions; $101,500 for engineering and engineering technology; and $100,000 for computer and information science major graduates five years post-graduation. 

You can also look at earnings by major degree earned and by level of education. Those with bachelor's degrees on average earned $57,000 compared with $70,500 for those with graduate and professional degrees five years post-graduation. Graduate level or professional degree graduates of computer and information science majors earned an average of $123,500 per year, compared with $99,500 for bachelor's degree graduates in computer and information science, five years post-graduation, in the July 2022 to June 2023 earnings period. Among the more detailed areas of study available, those with a graduate/ professional degree in pharmacy, pharmacy science and administration earned an average of $142,000 and veterinary medicine earned $118,000 five years post-graduation. These data are available by each of Oregon’s seven public universities. 

Graduate or professional degree earners median wages, five years post-graduation, rose from $47,500 for 2007-2008 graduates to $70,500 for 2017-2018 graduates. For bachelor’s degree holders, median earnings rose from $36,000 for 2007-2008 class graduates to $57,000 for the 2017-2018 class graduates, 5 years post-graduation.

In the HECC’s 2024 Key Performance Measurement Summary they note that the inflation adjusted five-year post-graduation bachelor’s degree average wage rose from $47,500 for the 2008-2009 class to $59,000 for the 2017-2018 class, a nearly 24% increase, showing the rising value of a university bachelor’s degree. Similar inflation-adjusted five-year post-graduation earnings gains were also highlighted for community college completers, rising in inflation-adjusted dollars from $40,000 for 2008-2009 graduates to $50,000 for 2017-2018 graduates. 

Community Colleges

Focusing on outcome data for Oregon’s 17 community colleges, enrollment declined from 353,894 in 2011 to 200,573 in 2023, a decrease of 37%. 

Graduates in the construction trades had the highest earnings five-years post-graduation, at $88,500. Several majors had average earnings during the July 2022-June 2023 period ranging from $59,000 to $64,000. Those included engineering; homeland security / law enforcement / firefighting and related protective services; computer and information sciences; and legal professions and studies. Community college majors with the lowest earnings five years-post graduation for the 2017-18 academic year graduating cohort were family and consumer sciences; personal and culinary services; parks / recreation / leisure and fitness studies; and communication technologies. Those majors had average earnings ranging between $31,000 and $34,500 five years post-graduation. Data are available for graduation years back to 2006-2007. 

Looking at more detailed major degree level, this shows that fire protection had the highest average earning post-graduation at $70,500 and the lowest was culinary arts at $17,000. All data from the HECC interactive dashboard are rounded to the nearest $500. 

Experimental Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes

Oregon is now one of the 30 states and the District of Columbia with data available from Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) experimental tabulations developed by the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program at the U.S. Census Bureau. PSEO data provides 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, using state-of-the-art confidentiality protection mechanisms to protect the underlying data, according to the Census Bureau. 

PSEO is an experimental data product generated by linking graduate transcript records to LEHD data on graduates of participating post-secondary institutions in the United States. The most recent update announced The U.S. Census Bureau has released data for seven additional institutions in the Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) experimental data product. PSEO now includes data on 935 institutions, which cover more than 33% of all college graduates in the United States in 2015.

We can look at different graduating year cohorts to compare different groups of graduates or look at all graduates from an institution. Oregon data includes both community college and public universities. The five-year post-graduation data for community colleges is published for three graduating cohorts: 2006-2010, 2011-2015, and 2016-2020. Oregon universities have data for two-year cohorts beginning in 2001 through the 2019-2021 class. You can search by degree level at universities, from bachelor’s though doctoral degrees. For community colleges, destination flow data are available for certificate programs through associate degree graduates. 

In total, PSEO data includes 206,669 bachelor’s degree recipients from partner educational institutions for one-year post graduation and that declines to 150,592 for five years post-graduation and 114,298 graduates 10 years post-graduation for all cohorts available.  Associate degree graduates are less prevalent in the PSEO data, as there are fewer cohorts and data for community colleges covers fewer total years than four-year universities. At one year post graduation, there were 86,254 associate degree graduates; 19,235 one- or two-year certificates; and 20,142 certificates less than one year. On the other end of the education spectrum, longitudinal earnings and employment data, one-year post-graduation data included 56,212 master’s degrees graduates and 11,411 doctoral research and professional practice degree graduates in the PSEO data for Oregon partner institutions for all cohorts.

In this next example we’ll look at Oregon bachelor’s degree graduates. For the 2013-2015 graduation cohort, five years post-graduation, average earnings were $60,219.  The highest earning graduates from the 2013-2015 graduation cohort, five years post-graduation, were computer and information science ($104,888); engineering technology / technicians ($92,125); and business, management, marketing, and related services ($72,597). On the lower end, average earnings for English language / literature ($46,506) and visual and performing arts ($46,364) had lower average earnings among those with earnings that were included in this data.  In that cohort of bachelor’s degree earners, there were 37,551 graduates with earnings. About one out of six graduates work in health care and social assistance. Educational services (14%) and professional, scientific, and technical services (13%) also employed many Oregon bachelor's degrees graduates from the 2013-2015 cohort. About one out of 10 bachelor's degrees graduates in that cohort worked in the manufacturing or construction industries. 

Detailed data by degree or program are available. For example, looking at computer and information science graduates, they are employed across a varied array of industries. The industry with the highest share was professional, scientific, and technical services, but still that industry accounts for only 28% of the employed graduates. Oregon was in the middle among western states that have PSEO data available. Finally, the PSEO allows us to see the geographic flow of workers to other parts of the U.S. Of those 37,551 bachelor’s degree graduates from the 2013-2015 cohort from Oregon’s public colleges and universities, 24,000 were employed in Oregon five years post-graduation. Another nearly 8,000 worked in the “balance of the Pacific” states. Further details of what industries those graduates who are still employed in Oregon, one, five, or 10 years post-graduation are available. All these data are available for individual education institutions. 

Of course, money is not everything, but this information can be very enlightening for those wanting to make informed decisions about career paths and education investment choices. It could also be useful for policy makers and planners looking at where Oregon college graduates go, and what industries they support post-graduation. For more information and links to the interactive dashboards go to:

Higher Education Coordinating Commission : Strategy, Research, and Data : Strategy, Research & Data : State of Oregon
PSEO Explorer - Census Bureau