Hard Times, Unemployment, Majors and Earnings: Did You Know That Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal?

Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce's latest report analyzes employment outcomes by college majors for recent college graduates, experienced college graduates, and graduate degrees. Overall, they found that college is the best alternative for young people, but what you study has serious implications for your employment prospects.

Major findings include: 

Risk of unemployment for recent graduates varies considerably depending on their major. 
The highest rate, the study found, is among Architecture graduates (13.9 percent) due to the collapse of the construction and home-building industries in the recession. Unemployment is generally higher for non-technical majors, such as the Arts (11.1 percent) or Social Sciences (8.9 percent). 

Unemployment is lowest where the ties between majors and occupations are highest. 
Unemployment rates are relatively low (5.4 percent) for recent graduates in Engineering, the Sciences, Education, or Healthcare related majors because they are tied to stable or growing industry sectors and occupations. Psychology and Social Work graduates also have relatively low rates (7.3 percent), because almost half of them work in the Healthcare or Education sectors. 

Consider a graduate degree. 
The overall unemployment rate for people with graduate degrees is just 3 percent. With the exception of Arts and Education, where pay traditionally has been low, workers with graduate degrees average between $60,000 and $100,000 per year, compared to a range of $48,000 and $62,000 for workers with Bachelor’s Degrees. 

We hope you find Hard Times useful and informative and we thank you for your continued interest and support of the Center on Education and the Workforce. 

Link to our page’s full report: http://cew.georgetown.edu/unemployment/