{"id":891,"date":"2011-11-28T20:58:33","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T01:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/?p=891"},"modified":"2014-03-15T00:07:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T00:07:16","slug":"earnings-and-unemployment-by-college-major","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/28\/earnings-and-unemployment-by-college-major\/","title":{"rendered":"Earnings and Unemployment by College Major"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Wall Street Journal recently published a <a href=\"http:\/\/graphicsweb.wsj.com\/documents\/NILF1111\/#term=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">table of income and unemployment data<\/a>\u00a0 that\u00a0presented pay and employment rates for various college majors. The original <a href=\"http:\/\/cew.georgetown.edu\/whatsitworth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">study<\/a> by Georgetown University&#8217;s Center on Education and the Workforce contained enough additional details that I thought it might be worth trying to incorporate the information into a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tableausoftware.com\/about\/who-we-are\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tableau<\/a> visualization.<\/p>\n<p>After a little data massaging, I created charts for both the high-level fields of study\u00a0and the more detailed individual majors. Each level contains unemployment rates, income levels, and popularity of major measured by number of enrollees.<\/p>\n<p><script src=\"http:\/\/public.tableausoftware.com\/javascripts\/api\/viz_v1.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"tableauPlaceholder\" style=\"text-align: center; width: 704px; height: 795px;\"><noscript><a href=\"#\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Income and Employment by College Major \" src=\"http:&#47;&#47;public.tableausoftware.com&#47;static&#47;images&#47;Ea&#47;EarningsandUnemploymentbyMajor&#47;EarningsandUnemployment&#47;1_rss.png\" style=\"height: 100%; width: 100%; border: none\" \/><\/a><\/noscript><object class=\"tableauViz\" style=\"display: none;\" width=\"704\" height=\"795\"><param name=\"host_url\" value=\"http%3A%2F%2Fpublic.tableausoftware.com%2F\" \/><param name=\"name\" value=\"EarningsandUnemploymentbyMajor\/EarningsandUnemployment\" \/><param name=\"tabs\" value=\"yes\" \/><param name=\"toolbar\" value=\"yes\" \/><param name=\"static_image\" value=\"http:\/\/public.tableausoftware.com\/static\/images\/Ea\/EarningsandUnemploymentbyMajor\/EarningsandUnemployment\/1.png\" \/><param name=\"animate_transition\" value=\"yes\" \/><param name=\"display_static_image\" value=\"yes\" \/><param name=\"display_spinner\" value=\"yes\" \/><param name=\"display_overlay\" value=\"yes\" \/><\/object><\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 704px; height: 22px; padding: 0px 10px 0px 0px; color: black; font: normal 8pt verdana,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;\">\n<div style=\"float: right; padding-right: 8px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tableausoftware.com\/public?ref=http:\/\/public.tableausoftware.com\/views\/EarningsandUnemploymentbyMajor\/EarningsandUnemployment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Powered by Tableau<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>One of the first things you notice is that, despite frequent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2011\/11\/are-teachers-paid-too-much-how-4-studies-answered-1-big-question\/247872\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">claims<\/a> to the contrary,\u00a0college\u00a0graduates with a degree\u00a0in\u00a0Education have the lowest median earnings overall. The Education field\u00a0also has the narrowest range of income and includes four of the ten majors with the lowest median earnings. On the plus side, fifteen of the sixteen Education majors have\u00a0(or had at the time of the study) unemployment rates below 5.5% &#8212; the weighted average rate of unemployment\u00a0for all majors in the study.<\/p>\n<p>Graduates with an Engineering degree have the highest median earnings overall and a relatively low unemployment rate compared to other disciplines. In addition,\u00a0seven of the ten majors with the highest median earnings were found in Engineering.<\/p>\n<p>Other majors with good earnings potential included the usual suspects (Computers &amp; Mathematics, Health, and Business)\u00a0while the best employment prospects were found in Education, Health, Physical Sciences, and Agriculture &amp; Natural Resources.<\/p>\n<p>As for individual majors, the winners in my completely fictitious categories are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Most Popular <\/strong>&#8211;\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onetonline.org\/find\/career?c=4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Business Management &amp; Administration<\/a> takes this category with nearly 2.8 million grads holding this degree. The next two majors in line (also in the Business field) weren&#8217;t even close &#8212; trailing by over a million people.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Best Prospects<\/strong> &#8211;\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.onetonline.org\/find\/quick?s=actuarial+science\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Actuarial Science<\/a>\u00a0beat out four other fully-employed competitors by coming in with a median income of over $80K.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Worst Prospects<\/strong> &#8211;\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onetonline.org\/find\/quick?s=Clinical+Psychology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Clinical Psychology<\/a> tops this category with an estimated unemployment rate of nearly 20%. Yikes! I also noticed that a number of other majors in the Psychology field had unemployment rates above 10%, which means that intra-discipline career changes for people with this major would be difficult.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Most\u00a0Deceptive<\/strong> &#8211;\u00a0The &#8220;winner&#8221; here is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onetonline.org\/find\/quick?s=architecture\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Architecture<\/a>, an outlier with the lowest median earnings and the highest unemployment rate\u00a0of all of the\u00a0Engineering majors. For this category, I wanted a relatively popular major with an uncommonly\u00a0high unemployment rate &#8230; the kind of major that churns out grads and then strands them in the unemployment line. An educational Judas, if you will. (Full disclosure: I\u00a0have an <a href=\"http:\/\/www4.uwm.edu\/sarup\/program\/march\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Architecture degree<\/a>, but I can&#8217;t say\u00a0I wasn&#8217;t warned.)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hidden Gem<\/strong> &#8211; I&#8217;m going to call this one a tie between <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onetonline.org\/link\/summary\/17-2171.00\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Petroleum Engineering<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.onetonline.org\/find\/quick?s=Pharmacy+Pharmaceutical+Sciences+%26+Administration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Pharmacy Pharmaceutical Sciences &amp; Administration<\/a>. Petroleum Engineering has a slight edge on median earnings ($127K vs. $105K) but the Pharma major has a lower overall unemployment rate (3.2% vs. 4.4%). You probably can&#8217;t go wrong with either one but keep on eye on the horizon &#8230;\u00a0Petroleum Engineering is notoriously dependent on the boom\/bust cycles of the oil and gas industry while workers in the pharmaceutical industry are facing major changes as companies try to adjust to globalization and increasing costs of product development.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Wall Street Journal recently published a table of income and unemployment data\u00a0 that\u00a0presented pay and employment rates for various college majors. The original study by Georgetown University&#8217;s Center on Education and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14,19,153,121,99,107,111],"class_list":["post-891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information","tag-architecture","tag-charts","tag-infographics","tag-occupations","tag-tableau","tag-unemployment","tag-visualization"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2174,"href":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891\/revisions\/2174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideasillustrated.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}