Colleges awarded 1.02 million occupational certificates below the associate level in the 2023–24 award year. This page sorts each state's certificate output into four labeled buckets built from two facts about each certificate field: whether completers' median earnings clear the national median wage within five years, and whether earnings keep climbing across ten. Earnings trajectories are Census PSEO in constant 2023 dollars; completions are IPEDS 2023–24, covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Nationally, 67 percent of occupational certificates are awarded in fields that pay above the national median wage by year five, grow at least 50 percent in real terms over ten years, or both. The state range is wide: 92 percent in Wyoming, 50 percent in New York.
National shares of the 1.01 million occupational certificate completions in fields where both the pay level and the ten-year slope are measured (99% of the total). Wage bar: $48,060, the U.S. median annual wage, BLS OEWS May 2023, in the same constant 2023 dollars as the PSEO trajectories.
The country's occupational certificate output is concentrated: ten fields account for 56 percent of the 1.02 million completions. Health professions are 28 percent of the national total, personal and culinary services 14 percent (cosmetology alone is 12 percent), business and management 12 percent, and the mechanical, construction, and production trades about 23 percent combined. Set against the two bars, that mix splits into near-thirds: 31.1 percent of certificates are in fields that both pay and climb, 36 percent in fields that clear exactly one bar (18.5 percent pay but stay flat, 17.5 percent climb from below), and 32.9 percent in fields that do neither. The two largest single contributors sit at the extremes: the 1-to-2-year practical nursing certificate anchors the paid-and-climbing bucket, and cosmetology anchors neither. Every state on the map below is measured against this same set of field benchmarks, so state differences are differences in what states produce.
Share of each state's occupational certificate completions awarded in fields that clear the national median wage by year five, grow at least 50 percent in real terms over ten years, or both. Darker means a larger share; the scale is stretched to the observed state range. Field trajectories: Census PSEO, pooled cohorts, constant 2023 dollars. Completions and institutional directory: NCES IPEDS, 2023–24. Wage bar: BLS OEWS May 2023 U.S. median annual wage.
The four buckets separate two facts the federal Workforce Pell earnings test collapses into one: the level completers reach and the direction their earnings move afterward. A field can clear a wage floor and stay flat for a decade, as commercial driving does; a field can miss the bar at year five and still climb past it, as sub-one-year practical nursing and vehicle maintenance certificates do. States sit in visibly different positions on both dimensions, and the position is a property of what each state's institutions produce, not of how its graduates perform inside a given field.
Each certificate field, at 4-digit CIP by credential length, is scored on two thresholds. Pay: median earnings of certificate completers five years after finishing, at or above $48,060, the U.S. median annual wage (BLS OEWS May 2023). Slope: real growth from the year-one median to the year-ten median of at least 50 percent, in constant 2023 dollars. Every completion in a measured field lands in exactly one bucket.
Clears the wage bar by year five and keeps growing: at least 50% real growth from year one to year ten.
Clears the wage bar but grows less than 50% over the decade. Passes any level test; the trajectory stays where it starts.
Below the wage bar at year five, but on a trajectory that rises at least 50% in real terms over ten years.
Below the wage bar and flat: earnings start low and grow less than 50% across the decade.
IPEDS reports every completion in two categories, men and women, so the composition of each bucket is directly measurable. Women earn 56 percent of occupational certificates overall. They earn 85 percent of the certificates in fields that neither pay above the median wage nor climb, and about a third of those in either bucket that clears the wage bar. Restricting to sub-one-year certificates, the lengths closest to the Workforce Pell window, sharpens the divide at the top: women's share of the paid-and-climbing bucket falls to 27 percent while the neither bucket stays 85 percent female.
Share of 2023–24 completions in each bucket. The vertical line marks women’s share of all certificates (56% in the top chart, 54% here): bars crossing it are more female than the certificate population overall, bars stopping short of it more male. IPEDS reports completions for men and women only, so the two shares sum to 100 by construction. Sub-one-year: awards under one year (648,348 completions); all sub-associate: 1.01M.
Read within each group rather than across buckets, the split is sharper. Half of the certificates women earn, 50.1 percent, are in fields that neither pay nor climb; for men the figure is 11.0 percent. Nearly half of men's certificates, 48.6 percent, are in fields that both clear the median wage and keep growing; for women it is 17.4 percent. The mechanism is field segregation. Sub-one-year cosmetology certificates run 97 percent female, childcare 96 percent, health care administration 94 percent, and medical assisting 91 percent, and those four fields dominate the bottom bucket, while the fields that anchor the top bucket run 89 to 96 percent male: electrician certificates are 4.7 percent female, HVAC 3.7 percent, vehicle maintenance 9.1 percent, welding 10.9 percent. The one majority-female bucket above the flat tier is climbing from below, 67 percent women, carried by nursing assisting and phlebotomy: fields that start under the wage bar and rise.
Pick a state to see the certificate fields behind its numbers: the twenty largest fields by completions, each with its bucket, year-5 median, and ten-year real growth. Small states can be dominated by a single institution; half of Wyoming's certificates, for example, come from one national trade school whose students arrive from across the country.
| Field | Length | Certificates | % of state | Bucket | Year-5 median | 10-yr growth |
|---|
Fields are 4-digit CIP by credential length; names are the most common program title in each family. Year-5 medians and growth are the national field benchmarks (Census PSEO, pooled cohorts, constant 2023 dollars) used throughout this page, not state-specific earnings. The full field-by-state detail is in the detail file; every state's portfolio is also in the state portfolios appendix (PDF).
Each bar splits a state's occupational certificates across the four buckets; states are sorted by the share in fields that pay or climb. The number is that share. Hover a bar for the full breakdown.
Each state's occupational certificate completions for 2023–24, split across the four buckets. Percentages are shares of completions in measured fields and sum to 100 across the four bucket columns. The United States row combines all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Click a column to sort.
| State | Certificates | Paid and climbing | Paid but flat | Climbing from below | Neither | Pays or climbs |
|---|
States with fewer than 2,000 completions (Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and the District of Columbia among them) have noisier shares; a single large program can move them several points.
Completions are IPEDS 2023–24 awards: first majors, sub-associate certificates, academic and transfer fields excluded (13 percent of sub-associate awards), assigned to states through the institutional directory. Field earnings are Census PSEO pooled cohorts in constant 2023 dollars, scored at 4-digit CIP by credential length as medians of institution-level medians with at least five reporting institutions; institutions are weighted equally so no single provider can define a field's benchmark. The pay bar is $48,060, the U.S. median annual wage (BLS OEWS May 2023); the slope bar is 50 percent real growth from the year-one to the year-ten median. Benchmarks are national properties of fields applied uniformly to every state's completions, so these figures measure portfolio composition, not state-specific graduate outcomes. Every definition, filter, caveat, and sensitivity check is documented in the methodology note below.
Data files: state summary, by duration band, men and women by bucket (sub-one-year), field benchmarks, state by field detail. Field-level classification: field appendix (PDF); every state's portfolio: state portfolios appendix (PDF).
The full methodology note documents the credential universe, the duration-band mapping to the Workforce Pell window, the benchmark construction and weighting choice, the threshold sensitivity table, and the reproducibility statement.
Download the methodology note (PDF) →Opportunity Data. (2026). Where Short-Term Credentials Lead, State by State. opportunitydata.org/short-term-credentials-by-state.html
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