Career Change ROI — BLS Wage Delta + O*NET Skill Gap NPV.
Real ROI math, not bootcamp marketing. Each pathway has O*NET skill gap, program tuition, BLS wage before and after, and a multi-year NPV with assumptions you can edit. Switching careers is expensive — see the math first.
RN to Nurse Practitioner (NP) Programs & ROI
ROI math (RN P50 $86K → NP P50 $129K = +$43K, BLS verified) + FNP/PMHNP/ACNP/CRNA specialty pay table + AANP 27-state FPA map + collaboration-tax dollar quantification + accreditation/preceptor decision criteria
→Career Transition ROI Calculator
For paths not yet covered as deep dives — bootcamp / certificate / cross-industry. Drop in your current and target SOC, get a multi-year NPV.
→Before any program decision, three numbers determine whether a transition has positive expected value. Get these right and the rest of the pathway page reads as confirmation; get any one wrong and the sticker price of the credential becomes the smallest cost on the list.
1. The wage delta — but at the right percentile
BLS OES publishes wage distributions at P10, P25, P50, P75, and P90 by SOC code. Mean and median for the target occupation aren’t the right reference if you’re entering at the bottom of the experience curve. The honest comparison is your current P50 against the target P25 (your first three years post-credential), then sliding to P50 over the assumed ramp. Programs that quote “average grad salary” almost always quote the post-experience P50 of practitioners, not the P25 entry rate.
2. Forgone wages and the ramp gap
For a multi-year program (NP, MBA, PA, MD, JD), forgone wages plus tuition often exceed the listed program cost two- to fourfold. A bootcamp with $20K tuition and 4-month enrollment loses ~$30K in forgone wages at a $90K starting salary; an MD program with $60K/year tuition and four years before residency-track income loses $360K+ in forgone wages plus ~$240K in tuition. Net cumulative income at year 5 vs year 10 vs year 20 reads very differently across these paths.
3. Skill-gap honesty via O*NET
O*NET publishes skill-importance ratings (1–5 scale) by SOC. Two occupations can sit close in median wage but have very different skill overlap. Software engineer to data scientist shares 60%+ of high-importance skills; CPA to RN shares roughly 15%. Low overlap means the credential program isn’t the only learning curve — the post-credential ramp is also longer, and the P25 you actually earn in year one is often below the published BLS P25 of practitioners with three years of experience.
Every deep-dive transition page on DeepComps walks through these three numbers explicitly with the source occupation’s and target occupation’s data side by side. The Career Transition ROI Calculator automates the same math for paths not yet covered as deep dives.
No “average lift” hand-waving. Every page shows the math.
- Pull O*NET skill importance for source and target SOC codes. Compute overlap and skill-gap delta.
- Pull BLS OES percentiles for both SOC codes. Pre-transition ceiling vs post-transition floor.
- Catalog program / credential routes with tuition, time-to-completion, and accreditation status.
- Compute multi-year ROI with editable discount rate and forgone-wage assumption. Publish the formula.
- Map state authority — where the target credential gets full practice authority, restricted, or full reciprocity.
- Why so few transition pages right now?
Each takes roughly 8–12 hours of editing because we model real ROI math. RN → NP is the highest-conviction P0 — well-defined source SOC, mature program market, full BLS coverage.
- What about teacher → SWE / nurse → CRNA / accountant → FA?
The general Career Transition ROI Calculator handles those today. Dedicated deep-dive pages come in Phase 2.
- Are bootcamp affiliates priced into the math?
No. Tuition figures use the program’s published price. Affiliate links are clearly labeled and don’t influence the recommended program order.