This cohort study draws nine education, workforce and social services administrative data files received from multiple states, state agencies, and the federal Office of Personnel Management.  The defined cohort is 1984 first-time registrants in Maryland’s public community colleges.  The multi-source analytical integrated data file documents subsequent postsecondary education, employment/earnings, and social service statuses through 2013.

Findings comparing snapshots of 1980’s and recent post-recession earnings quintile assignment and industry affiliation offer new gender-specific evidence about mobility within the earnings distribution over three recent decades.  Similarly, advocates for popular industry-specific education and training sector policies will have new challenging evidence about the amount and directions of inter-industry mobility patterns over time, including pre- and post-recession time span coverage. The intertwined mobility in, out of, and between the education, workforce, and three different social services adds to the dynamics that this longitudinally integrated multifaceted long-horizon administrative dataset presents.

The paper exemplifies why the U.S. Office of Management and Budget continues to escalate pressure on federal government agencies to make better use of integrated data system capabilities to inform important policy and program management decisions.  Short-term analyses of education and workforce dynamics are now popular.  These are a minimally satisfactory starting point for truly understanding the ‘outcome’ of a defined education achievement.  Similarly, the rapid growth of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program caseloads and continuing uncertainties about Extended Unemployment Compensation benefits, combine to heighten interest in whether and how education/training, employment and social service benefits interact with what consequences.  The value derivable from this extended time span retention of the integrated data system has to be demonstrated; decision makers must be able to easily see the relevance of new insights that emerge from analysis of longitudinal integrated data sources for prioritizing the timing and targeting of actions. 

The paper concludes with direct statements about how integrated data system access, content and use in other developed nations that has informed my research, and what lessons we offer to those in other countries about why it is important to conduct similar studies in different economic circumstances.