Graduate Outcomes Dashboard

The USD Graduate Outcomes Dashboard displays national workforce data for USD graduates collected through a data-sharing agreement between the South Dakota Board of Regents and the US Census Bureau.

 

Many university stakeholders - from students and parents to administrators and policymakers - have a keen interest in the labor force outcomes of USD graduates. In the past, such reporting has been imperfect at best, often relying on survey responses or other incomplete data sources. But beginning in 2025, a partnership between the South Dakota Board of Regents (SDBOR) and the US Census Bureau now provides complete, national workforce placement data for USD graduates.

Under the US Census Bureau's Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) program, lists of USD degree completers are transmitted annually by SDBOR to the US Census Bureau which then matches those data against a national employment database. Outcome data returned from the PSEO system include employment earnings, geographies, and industries. These "hard" administrative data, which are available for degree completers from 2001 to the present, provide authoritative information about the employment outcomes of USD graduates.

 
 

Source(s):

  • U.S. Census Bureau, "pseoe_sd," Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes [Experimental], 2025Q2 V4.12.0, https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/pseo, accessed July 10, 2025.
  • U.S. Census Bureau, "pseof_sd," Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes [Experimental], 2025Q2 V4.12.0, https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/pseo, accessed July 10, 2025.

Notes:

  • The PSEO system uses the federal Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) national jobs database - a compilation of various employment datasets - which accounts for approximately 96 percent of employment in the US. These workforce data include employment records from private-industry employment, state and local government employment, and federal government employment. Exclusions include but are not limited to certain self-employed workers, railroad workers, elected officials, members of the armed forces, and postal workers.
  • Placement searches are defined by calendar year. For example, the five-year placement data for a May 2005 graduate will be sourced from calendar year 2010.
  • Workers found to be insufficiently attached to the labor force (i.e., those either working fewer than three quarters of the year or earning less than annualized federal minimum wage) are excluded from the PSEO analysis.
  • All PSEO earnings data are converted to current dollars using CPI-U.
  • PSEO data are suppressed (i.e., not reported) for small groups. For this reason, fewer data points will be available for smaller academic programs than for larger academic programs.
  • Only limited PSEO employment data are available for detailed degree areas (i.e., CIP-4 categories).
  • Detailed information about the PSEO system is available at PSEO System.