Career and Technical Education Alignment Across Five States

Abstract

We describe alignment between high school career and technical education (CTE) and local labor markets across five states—Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Tennessee, and Washington. We find that CTE is partially aligned with local labor markets. A 10-percentage-point higher share of local jobs related to a CTE career cluster is associated with a 3-point higher rate of CTE concentration in that cluster. Women and students from racial or ethnic minority groups are better aligned with local employment than men, in part due to their selection of CTE fields like Education & Training, Health Science, and Hospitality & Tourism, which correspond with a large portion of the workforce in almost every metro area. We find more limited evidence of dynamic, short-term adjustments in CTE after changes in local labor markets. A small degree of realignment lags the labor market by 2 to 3 years and is only observed following changes in college-level employment.