Unemployment, Underemployment of Recent Grads by Major

[Cheerful]

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/02/18/41-recent-grads-work-jobs-not-requiring-degree?_ga=2.213680028.963975236.1582041985-1451632400.1582041985

"The New York Federal Reserve data also highlight varying unemployment and underemployment outcomes for recent college graduates by major, as summarized in this chart.

Recent graduates of programs in education, engineering and nursing have among the lowest unemployment and underemployment rates, while rates are much higher for recent graduates in many fields in the liberal arts and sciences and some professionally oriented fields.

The field whose recent graduates have the highest rate of unemployment is mass media (7.8 percent), while the field whose recent graduates have the highest rate of underemployment is criminal justice (73.2 percent)."

[tuxthepenguin]

One interpretation of these numbers is OMG, a college degree is useless. Another interpretation is OMG, you need a college degree to be competitive even for jobs that technically can be done with only a high school diploma.

[marshwiggle]

Here are all of the fields with underemployment rates of less than 30%:

• Architecture
• Computer Science
• Education (various flavours)
• Engineering (various flavours)
• Nursing
• Pharmacy
• Accounting

All of these, with the possible exception of computer science*, are professional fields where the qualification is required. The fields where underemployment is higher are those where jobs don't require specific qualifications.

So, if they want to avoid the prospect of underemployment, students should choose professional fields where the credential is a necessity for employment.

Contrast "nursing" with "health services";
Nursing: 11% underemployment, $70000 wage mid-career, 26% with grad degree
Health services: 46% underemployment, $55000 wage mid-career, 53% with grad degree

The focused path of nursing gives a lot more bang for buck.

(* Some employers have tests for programmers and hire on the basis of those, so a self-taught person who had the skills would be eligible.)

[ciao_yall]

Fine. A student graduates from college and doesn't get a career job first thing. So they go work in retail with all the high school graduates folding sweaters at Banana Republic for a while.

5 years later?

The college grad was recruited into the management training program at BR and is now in a great career in retail.

The high school grad is still folding sweaters. Maybe promoted to shift lead by now?

[Aster]

One interpretation of these numbers is OMG, a college degree is useless. Another interpretation is OMG, you need a college degree to be competitive even for jobs that technically can be done with only a high school diploma.

Ha ha. And yes.

[Aster]

Here are all of the fields with underemployment rates of less than 30%:

• Architecture
• Computer Science
• Education (various flavours)
• Engineering (various flavours)
• Nursing
• Pharmacy
• Accounting

What is rarely shown with certain employment fields is just how fast that qualified workers quit that job.

Education and Nursing, for example, are almost always in critical supply mostly because so few teachers and nurses stick with their career for more than 5 years.  For these sorts of employment, fixing the problem does not lie with colleges and universities. We can double our graduates, but that would just double the burnout rate. Fixing the problem with those sorts of jobs lies with improving the quality of work with the employers.

[spork]

Here are all of the fields with underemployment rates of less than 30%:

[. . .]

Clicking on "median wage, mid-career" shows that the lowest lifetime earnings (extrapolating here, but probably likely) are for K-12 teachers and social workers. Highest are in engineering, pharmacy, physics, economics, and computer science.

While history, for example, shows mid-career earnings not much lower than "general business," the proportion with graduate degrees is more than twice as large for the former. And the average starting salary is far lower. The wage gap compounded over time and the additional cost of a graduate degree = not nearly as good of an ROI.

[Caracal]

Here are all of the fields with underemployment rates of less than 30%:

• Architecture
• Computer Science
• Education (various flavours)
• Engineering (various flavours)
• Nursing
• Pharmacy
• Accounting

As a student I never considered any of those fields (with the exception I suppose of education) because I'd be awful at all of them and probably would have failed out of those programs. I don't think I'm particularly unusual in that regard. If the world was filled with people who had the avocation and capability to be good nurses, there wouldn't be a shortage of nurses.

If I hadn't been a liberal arts major, my choices would really have been to major in various fields that don't generally have much better rates of underemployment or higher salaries, like business or psychology.

[Wahoo Redux]

I wish we had a better look at what exactly is meant by "underemployment" and how people get there. 

I was always employed but spent a good deal of my young adulthood "underemployed" (not using college-gained skill-sets or even requiring a college degree).  This had a lot more to do with inertia and apathy toward the jobs I was doing than with the value of my degree, I think.  At the same time, had I been a little more focused I probably could have parlayed the degree into something more lucrative and responsible and, now that I think about it, I was actually advancing through the corporate structure in spite of myself and my miserable attitude. 

Most of the majors have a very low unemployment rate that is actually normal for people in transition between jobs and/or dealing with life events.  I've heard that this is generally a sign of a healthy economy---i.e. that people have the ability to look for alternate employment.