The population of interest was high school students who graduated from a Maryland public high school with a diploma in three cohort years: 2008, 2009 and 2010. These cohorts were selected as they had all reach the age of 25. Over 170,000 high school graduates were included in the initial population of interest. Any high school graduate that obtained an Associate’s degree or higher by age 25 was removed from the population, leaving 105,300 high school graduates available for analysis.
The remaining population was divided into three groups based upon education attainment by age 25:
1. Certificate graduates – postsecondary certificate graduates,
2. Some college – individuals with some college enrollment but no degree conferred, and
3. High school graduates – high school graduates without a college enrollment record.
Wage visibility is defined as the number of quarters in which an individual has reported wages for the time frame of interest. Wage visibility is directly affected by gaps in the MLDS employment data. The MLDS does not contain workforce data on self-employed persons, independent contractors, military personnel, out-of-state, or federal employees.
Wage records were analyzed for visibility for the 105,330 individuals who met the education selection criteria. As individuals change jobs over the course of the period of analysis it is possible that when they do not have wage data, it may be due to gaps in the MLDS employment data rather than unemployment. Individuals were placed into one of five wage visibility groups:
1. No Visibility – no wages for the entire period,
2. Irregular Visibility – wages for 25% of the period (approximately 2 years)
3. Intermittent Visibility – wages for 25%-49% of the period (3 to 3.5 years)
4. Frequent Visibility – wages for 50%-74% (3.5 to 5 years), or
5. Continuous Visibility – wages for 75% or more of the period (5 to 7 years).
Individuals in the continuous visibility group were selected for analysis as these individuals provide a complete wage history for calculating wage trajectories. Individuals in the continuous visibility group consisted of the highest percentage of the wage visibility groups (37% of the total or 39,380 individuals).
The median quarterly wage for each individual within each educational attainment group was selected at age 18, age 21, and age 25. Then, the median quarterly wage was selected for each age-education attainment group
Two sources of data were selected to provide context for the results and guide the analysis. Collectively,these two sources provide comparison points between the wage data, cost of living, and median wages for all workers. Both sources provide data at the state-level and the county-level
MIT Living Wage Calculator
The Living Wage Calculator developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides data on the cost of living in various geographic areas across the United States. The living wage calculator incorporates the cost of food, housing, health insurance, transportation, taxes, clothing and other personal items to derive the minimum annual income required for basic self-sufficiency. It is more comprehensive than traditional poverty measures, which do not incorporate these broader costs of living. More information on the MIT Living Wage Calculator is available on their website. The measure selected from the Living Wage Calculator was “required annual income before taxes” for one adult with no dependent children. This income was converted to a quarterly income to align to the MLDS quarterly wage data and is referred to as “living wage” in the remainder of this analysis. https://livingwage.mit.edu/pages/about
American Community Survey 5 Year Estimates
The second source of contextual data is the 2011 to 2015 American Community Survey 5 Year Estimates (ACS). This survey provides extensive data on demographic characteristics, housing, and wages for States and Counties throughout the United States. The measure selected from the ACS was“median annual earnings for workers”. This income measure was converted to quarterly earnings to align to the MLDS quarterly wage data and is referred to as “median earnings”.
https://www.census.gov/acs/www/data/data-tables-and-tools/data-profiles/2017/