College Majors and Earnings Growth

Woosuk Choi, Josh Kinsler, Alexis Orellana and Ronni Pavan

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: We estimate major-specific earnings profiles using matched American Community Survey (ACS) and Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) data. Building on Deming and Noray (2020), we exploit a long earnings panel to overcome key limitations of cross-sectional approaches to lifecycle estimation. We find that engineering and computer science majors experience earnings growth that is comparable to or faster than that of other majors, a category including humanities, education, psychology, and similar fields. In contrast, Deming and Noray (2020) use a crosscohort approach and find that earnings for engineering and computer science majors decline relative to other fields over the lifecycle.

Date: 2026-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-lab
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https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2026/adrm/ces/CES-WP-26-14.pdf First version, 2026 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:26-14

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