Are MPH Graduates Aligned with Today’s Job Market?

Public health degree programs provide key competencies employers demand, but graduate employability could still be improved by using more real-time data from employer job postings, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The new findings could help public health schools and programs ensure that graduates obtain specific technical skills listed in job postings, meet current employer needs, and prepare graduates for today’s labor market demands. The findings are published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The competencies required for the MPH curriculum are established by the Council on Education in Public Health (CEPH). Competencies are generally in alignment with current employer needs.

The new study is the first to use real-time data from a large-scale data set of job postings to analyze the top skills, certifications, and software in demand by current employers seeking to hire MPH graduates, while comparing them with the competencies required by CEPH.

“Our research revealed labor market competition for public health degree graduates, as well as certain technical skills desired by today’s employers while showing that the CEPH competencies do, in large part, match current employer demands,” noted Heather Krasna, PhD, EdM, associate dean of Career and Professional Development at Columbia Mailman School.

Using a dataset of 70,343 job postings for MPH graduates from Lightcast, which collects, and analyzes millions of job postings per year, the researchers contrasted skills from the postings with CEPH competencies. They used real-time job posting data, to validate whether or not required competencies match employer needs, and to illustrate ongoing labor market competition for public health graduates.

Lightcast uses machine learning and natural language processing tools to deduplicate job postings, to code the job postings by occupation type, job title, company name, industry, and skills, and to provide a list of salary ranges. Lightcast assesses job postings for “sequences of words that indicate skills,” and matches them to a “comprehensive taxonomy of over 32,000 skills collected from hundreds of millions of job postings, resumes, and online profiles,” to categorize skills.

Employers currently seeking to hire MPH graduates are predominantly in for-profit industries, followed by academia/research, and health care. Only 12 percent of unique job postings were in government agencies, illustrating ongoing labor market competition for public health graduates from other sectors—especially from higher-paying industries like consulting, insurance, and pharmaceuticals.

“The job market for MPH graduates seems to continue moving towards for-profit companies such as insurance firms and health care, which is in alignment with other research on employment outcomes of public health graduates,” said Krasna. “Public health graduates’ skills are in demand in many sectors where they can make a positive impact on the public’s health.”

Noteworthy is that job postings from employers seeking to hire MPH graduates did not appear to prioritize diversity and inclusion, health equity, policy, advocacy, and other related skills which are required competencies by CEPH. According to Krasna there are several possible explanations for this.

“It is possible that the large proportion of job postings in for-profit corporations [26%], healthcare/hospitals [14%], and academia/research [26%] and the relative scarcity of job postings in government or nonprofits [12%] as well as the skewing of job titles towards analytical, technical and epidemiological roles meant that technical and statistical skills were more in-demand than skills in community partnerships and diversity,” she said.

Even if health equity skills are not listed as the top requirements in job postings, graduates with training in health equity will bring these skills to employers seeking a public health perspective in their workplace. “Ensuring public health graduates receive these skills is crucial, regardless of where graduates find jobs,” said Krasna.

The most common titles from Lightcast Job postings collected July 2022-Feb. 2023 were epidemiologists at 1,344 and biostatisticians at 1,323, followed by environmental health and safety specialists at 1,185. Competencies in communications and management and applied leadership skills were considered critically important for communicating public health content.

“We believe our study is a thorough analysis of first-destination employment outcomes of public health graduates and offers valuable insights into the alignment between academic training and industry needs and complements articles on labor market competition for public health graduates,” said Krasna.