2021 ACS College Major Data - Median Income, Unemployment Rate and Percentage of People with an Advanced Degree

USA
1

Dear IPUMS Team,

I would like to retrieve data on what bachelor’s degree holders in the labor force studied in college. I would like to pull the median income, unemployment rate and the percentage of people with an advanced degree of those college majors. I know the sample is ACS 2021, but what would be the correct variables to select to build an accurate data extract?

Thank you for your help!

Best,
Alex Gailey

2

Thank you for your question. If I understand correctly, you would like to know what variables available in the 2021 1-year ACS measure income, labor force status, employment, degree field, and educational attainment. The following variables may be useful to you:

  • DEGFIELD reports the field of the person’s Bachelor’s degree
  • EDUC indicates respondents’ educational attainment, but does not indicate if someone holds an advanced degree. Information on advanced degrees is not available in the ACS.
  • GRADEATT reports the level of recent schooling for people who attended regular school or college in the past three months. This variable identifies graduate or professional school attendance.
  • There are many income variables to choose from depending on whose and what type of income you want to estimate. See the person-level income variables list and the HHINCOME variable.
  • EMPSTAT reports if the respondent is employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force.

You can explore the variables available on IPUMS USA using the data finder. Hover over the household or person dropdown menus to select variable categories to browse variables. Click on a variable name to read information about the codes, comparability, and universe. Short video tutorials on making a data extract and using the IPUMS variable descriptions may be helpful.

Please feel free to follow up with any additional questions.