Half of College Grads Are Working Jobs That Don’t Use Their Degrees

Choice of major, internships and getting the right first job after graduation are critical to career paths, new data show

By Vanessa Fuhrmans and Lindsay Ellis of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Roughly half of college graduates end up in jobs where their degrees aren’t needed, and that underemployment has lasting implications for workers’ earnings and career paths."

"the number of graduates in jobs that don’t make use of their skills or credentials—52%—is greater than previously thought, and underscores the lasting importance of that first job after graduation.

Of the graduates in non-college-level jobs a year after leaving college, the vast majority remained underemployed a decade later" 

"More than any other factor analyzed—including race, gender and choice of university—what a person studies determines their odds of getting on a college-level career track. Internships are also critical."

"Bachelor’s degree holders in college-level jobs earn nearly 90% more than people with just a high-school diploma in their 20s"

"underemployed college graduates earn 25% more than high-school graduates."

"Once a graduate’s first two or three jobs are clustered around one industry or set of tasks—say, an aspiring marketing strategist who takes a couple of food-service supervisor roles to pay the bills—it’s harder to hop onto another career lane"

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, not all degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, disciplines are a sure bet to landing a job that reflects a college education, the study found. 

Nearly half of people who majored in biology and biomedical sciences—47%—remained underemployed five years after graduating. Likewise, business majors less focused on quantitative skills, such as marketing and human resources, were twice as likely to be underemployed than those with math-intensive business degrees, such as accounting or finance."

"most of the graduates who don’t find work reflecting their degrees are what they call “severely underemployed,” meaning they’re in jobs that only require a high school education or less. Five years after graduation, 88% of underemployed graduates remained in this category"

"Securing even one internship during college significantly improves the odds of landing a college-level job upon graduation, according to the study. For humanities and psychology majors, the rate of underemployment five years after college dropped by a quarter with an internship. Among social-sciences majors, it fell by 40%."

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When it comes to lifetime earnings, the most important decision appears to be the choice of college major (2024) 

 Will Studying Economics Make You Rich? A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of the Returns to College Major  (2023)

Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital (2022) 

A Declining Industry? The Growing Financial Risks Of Attending College (2022)

Why do employers pay extra money to people who study a bunch of subjects in college that they don’t actually need you to know? Signaling (2020)

Studying Economics Increases Wages a Lot (2020)

50 College Majors With the Best Return on Investment (2015)

What College Majors Pay The Highest? (2013)

See also from Feb. 2020 this article 33 of the Highest-Paying Majors You Can Choose in College.

Here is the salary data from that article

The 15 Highest-Paying Majors Overall

1. Petroleum engineering Median salary: $135,754 

2. Pharmacy, pharmaceutical sciences, and pharmaceutical administration Median salary: $112,519 

3. Metallurgical engineering Median salary: $97,743 

4. Mining and mineral engineering Median salary: $97,372 

5. Chemical engineering Median salary: $96,156 

6. Electrical engineering Median salary: $93,215 

7. Aerospace engineering Median salary: $90,141 

8. Mechanical engineering Median salary: $86,883 

9. Computer engineering Median salary: $86,553 

10. Geological and geophysical engineering Median salary: $86,553 

11. Computer science Median salary: $82,858 

12. Civil engineering Median salary: $82,858 

13. Applied mathematics Median salary: $82,858 

14. Industrial and manufacturing engineering Median salary: $81,452 

15. Physics Median salary: $81,143

 

The Best College Majors Outside of Technology and Engineering

 

1. Economics Median salary: $76,000 

2. Finance Median salary: $73,000

3. Accounting Median salary: $69,000 

4. Oceanography Median salary: $69,000 

5. Geology and earth science Median salary: $69,000 

6. Food science Median salary: $67,000 

7. Agricultural economics Median salary: $67,000 

8. Nursing Median salary: $66,000 

9. Industrial and organizational psychology Median salary: $66,000 

10. Meteorology Median salary: $66,000 

11. Public policy Median salary: $65,000 

12. Chemistry Median salary: $64,000 

13. Political science Median salary: $64,000 

14. Marketing Median salary: $63,000 

15. Forestry Median salary: $62,000 

16. Business management and business administration Median salary: $62,000 

17. International relations Median salary: $62,000 

18. Microbiology Median salary: $62,000