Who Takes High‐Earning CTE Pathways?

Wage gaps across demographic groups in the U.S. labor market are well documented. A key question is the degree to which group‐based sorting into high‐ versus low‐paying occupations reflects underlying preferences, versus structural barriers or prior educational experiences. High school Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs offer insight into the preference side of this question, since CTE pathways are largely open‐access and allow students to explore a career field without committing to it. We study CTE enrollment patterns across four states and one large metro area to assess if potential pay in students' CTE fields foreshadows longstanding inequities in the labor market. The dominant theme that emerges from parallel multi‐state analyses is that women concentrate in fields linked to jobs with 7%–20% lower pay, a range that includes the actual U.S. gender pay gap. We also find disparities in potential pay by race, ethnicity, family income, and disability identification, although these are much smaller and less consistent across locations than the gender gap.