College majors with the highest unemployment rates
- Thread starter Will E Worm
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JaanaRuutu
Official Checked Star Member
true fact: my original goal was to do a double major of linguistics and international business. Guess I made a good choice not following through.
Mayhem
Banned
My sister got her psych degree and never used it........on anyone but her family. Seriously. I've told her on more than one occasion that her probing, "tell me how you feel" bullshit was annoying as hell. Meanwhile, every job she has held since has had nothing to do with psychology.
Music is part of #2. No wonder I'm a fucking stagehand... 
Something to remember is that even courses and degrees that might be advantageous when they are taken might not stay that way in the future. It might not even stay that way once somebody enters into a place of higher education until they get their degrees a few years later.
I know of quite a few people I went to school with that were going to go into an expanding profession with a lot of people hiring at the time (teaching) that school advisers even said it was a good idea because of the future prospects it held. Then the market fell out from underneath them. It's only gotten worse. I imagine many of them are screwed now. Either it did them no good and they aren't in teaching now, or they are in it but in highly different and worse circumstances than what they thought they were getting.
I imagine similar situations happen to a lot of people that are planning into going into a lot of professions. I feel bad for them. Yes, there are cases were some degrees are obviously not going to be useful, but in others, frankly, everybody pretty much has to guess right to have any decent prospects for their careers. There is no stability for anybody in their jobs anymore.
I know of quite a few people I went to school with that were going to go into an expanding profession with a lot of people hiring at the time (teaching) that school advisers even said it was a good idea because of the future prospects it held. Then the market fell out from underneath them. It's only gotten worse. I imagine many of them are screwed now. Either it did them no good and they aren't in teaching now, or they are in it but in highly different and worse circumstances than what they thought they were getting.
I imagine similar situations happen to a lot of people that are planning into going into a lot of professions. I feel bad for them. Yes, there are cases were some degrees are obviously not going to be useful, but in others, frankly, everybody pretty much has to guess right to have any decent prospects for their careers. There is no stability for anybody in their jobs anymore.
So, Will, your laughing emoticon is you taking delight in Americans being unemployed after a post-secondary education?
ApolloBalboa
Was King of the Board for a Day
I was originally majoring in film and film studies before I realized that going about it through school wasn't a very profitable way to do so. Plus, I happened to run out of cash at the time.
SpexyAshleigh
Official Checked Star Member
Fine Art major over here *high five for being #2!*
Thank god for internet porn...
Thank god for internet porn...
I'd be curious to know more about those stats. Many of those majors are taken by women, who (more often than men) stay at home to have kids. I wonder of the unemployment rates include those who are seeking work, or also the ones who choose not to work.
That said, psychology is often seen as a "soft" major no matter what gender you are, without a whole lot of related job skills attached to it. With tons of psych majors out there, you better also be smart, a good communicator, and a hard-ass worker with tons of extracurriculars in college to stand out among all the psych majors.
That said, psychology is often seen as a "soft" major no matter what gender you are, without a whole lot of related job skills attached to it. With tons of psych majors out there, you better also be smart, a good communicator, and a hard-ass worker with tons of extracurriculars in college to stand out among all the psych majors.
xfire
New Twitter/X @cxffreeman
It makes him feel better for being an uneducated asshat.
VeronicaVice
Official Checked Star Member
They can always fallback on pornstar
Will E Worm
Conspiracy...
Yet another poignantly elaborate rebuttal by the king of discourse.
This is interesting and I don't doubt there's some truth to it, but I don't believe it's as simple as all that either.
The corollary article ranking the 25 majors with the lowest unemployment rates lists Medical Technicians and Nursing at 1.7% and 2.2%, respectively, and concludes with Civil Engineering (4.9%) and Electrical Engineering, Environmental Science & Math (5%).
So the 25th most unemployed majors (Journalism and Sociology) stand at 7% according to this study, while the 25th least unemployed stand at 5%, which means that another 50 majors fall within that 5% and 7% range.
In other words, there are virtually negligible differences between the unemployment rates of most all of the majors on this list, well outside the bell curve, in fact. With a 2 point difference between #25 and #76 on the list, and only a 4 point difference between #18 (Studio Art) and #86 (Theology & Religious Vocations), this list looks pretty representative of average unemployment rates.
Every major between #'s 9 and 93 falls within one standard deviation (2.8%) of the average (6.4%), and all but the top 4 most unemployed majors (Library Science, US History, Fine Arts & Clinical Psych) fall within 2 standard deviations, though the smattering of various Psych degrees, Military Technologies, Architecture, Linguistics and Comparative Literature (#'s 5-9) are pretty close.
So at most, only the Top 10 or so most unemployed majors stand out as remarkable vis-à-vis average unemployment rates among the 100 most popular majors, with only the Top 5 or so appearing truly suspect when it comes to employability.
One thing that isn't clear about about these findings is, when and for how long are these people unemployed? Does this study only include the first year or two after graduation, or is this some kind of average across entire careers? Seems to me these results are pretty suspect if they only take into account the years after graduation.
At the same time, there are a few other things not taken into consideration in these articles, from what I can tell:
1. Being employed is good, but it isn't the only good. According to one of the other related articles, only the various applied Engineering majors (Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, Civil), Physics, Economics, Finance and Business Information Systems are among the list of top 25 most employable majors. The majority of the 25 most employable majors are jobs very few people want, have high "burn out" rates and don't pay very well, e.g., PE/Health Teacher, Religious Vocations (i.e., the Clergy and non-Ordained Ministry, not community involvement or volunteering), numerous therapeutic and medical assistance fields, law enforcement, "High School Teacher" (which is as general as it could possibly be) and a slew of either highly specialized or decidedly nondescript educational fields and various Administrative (i.e., "clerical") vocations.
By contrast, among the least employable majors are Fine Arts, Literature, Performing Arts, Film, Liberal Arts, Humanities and Philosophical & Religious Studies. These don't pay well at all, but in my opinion, they're more likely to make people happy, and the only reason people leave these professions is precisely to make more money. If they could, they would do these things all their lives.
2. How many people - both on the high and low ends of the employability scale according to this study - are employed, but not in their major areas of study?
One person here remarked that his sister was a Psych major, and that every job she's had since graduation has been outside of the field of psychology. Fair enough, but the point is that she has been employed. I don't want to draw too many conclusions from that fact alone, especially without knowing the details, but it's at least worth considering the possibility that some degrees (especially in the bottom 25) are more general, and prepare people to perform many different types of jobs, whereas other degrees (especially in the top 25) prepare people to perform that one specific job and little else.
I have a friend who met his wife in college, and she majored in one of the Medical Technology fields, while most of her friends majored in general Nursing (the 2 most employable majors, according to the study). All of them got jobs right after graduation, and all of them left the medical profession within 3 years. They all got jobs doing other things. For example, my friend's wife has been a Travel Agent, a Real Estate Agent and a couple other things over the course of ten years as they started a family. Now their kids are getting older and she's back in the Medical Tech field she originally majored in, but only part time, and mostly just for the health benefits.
Her friends hated Nursing and have never returned. Most of them went into Pharmaceutical Sales, which is related to their original major, but which requires a radically different skill set. Those who naturally have a variety of skills in abundance are fortunate and can adapt to different professions. But Humanities and Liberal Arts majors train people to think, not simply to perform rote operations. Art, Literature, Philosophy, even Psychology, train students to be creative, think outside the box, analyze and adapt. In other words, these subjects teach people how to learn, which is the most valuable skill one can have. It makes these people eminently employable outside their "pure" area of study, even if it's difficult to get that across on a résumé.
3. Finally, I don't want to "psychologize" the very damning indictment of Psychology, but different subjects attract distinct personality types.
In other words, for the moment, let's remove education from the equation. Is it possible that the "head in the clouds" types are probably not going to get jobs anyway, and that the intensely practical type of person is going to do something "productive" regardless of whether their training is in school, on the job or in real life? Those who are inclined toward many different occupations will invariably pursue many different ones over their lifetimes. But those who aren't likely to do anything practical or specific in their careers, and those who can only do a few specific things because they are task-oriented, probably don't benefit much from education, or at least not from formal degrees. This isn't a reflection on those majors so much as a correlation between employability and personality types, as many "employable" people who major in Liberal Arts and Humanities go on to careers in Business, Management, Sales & Marketing, Law, etc., etc.
The corollary article ranking the 25 majors with the lowest unemployment rates lists Medical Technicians and Nursing at 1.7% and 2.2%, respectively, and concludes with Civil Engineering (4.9%) and Electrical Engineering, Environmental Science & Math (5%).
So the 25th most unemployed majors (Journalism and Sociology) stand at 7% according to this study, while the 25th least unemployed stand at 5%, which means that another 50 majors fall within that 5% and 7% range.
In other words, there are virtually negligible differences between the unemployment rates of most all of the majors on this list, well outside the bell curve, in fact. With a 2 point difference between #25 and #76 on the list, and only a 4 point difference between #18 (Studio Art) and #86 (Theology & Religious Vocations), this list looks pretty representative of average unemployment rates.
Every major between #'s 9 and 93 falls within one standard deviation (2.8%) of the average (6.4%), and all but the top 4 most unemployed majors (Library Science, US History, Fine Arts & Clinical Psych) fall within 2 standard deviations, though the smattering of various Psych degrees, Military Technologies, Architecture, Linguistics and Comparative Literature (#'s 5-9) are pretty close.
So at most, only the Top 10 or so most unemployed majors stand out as remarkable vis-à-vis average unemployment rates among the 100 most popular majors, with only the Top 5 or so appearing truly suspect when it comes to employability.
One thing that isn't clear about about these findings is, when and for how long are these people unemployed? Does this study only include the first year or two after graduation, or is this some kind of average across entire careers? Seems to me these results are pretty suspect if they only take into account the years after graduation.
At the same time, there are a few other things not taken into consideration in these articles, from what I can tell:
1. Being employed is good, but it isn't the only good. According to one of the other related articles, only the various applied Engineering majors (Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, Civil), Physics, Economics, Finance and Business Information Systems are among the list of top 25 most employable majors. The majority of the 25 most employable majors are jobs very few people want, have high "burn out" rates and don't pay very well, e.g., PE/Health Teacher, Religious Vocations (i.e., the Clergy and non-Ordained Ministry, not community involvement or volunteering), numerous therapeutic and medical assistance fields, law enforcement, "High School Teacher" (which is as general as it could possibly be) and a slew of either highly specialized or decidedly nondescript educational fields and various Administrative (i.e., "clerical") vocations.
By contrast, among the least employable majors are Fine Arts, Literature, Performing Arts, Film, Liberal Arts, Humanities and Philosophical & Religious Studies. These don't pay well at all, but in my opinion, they're more likely to make people happy, and the only reason people leave these professions is precisely to make more money. If they could, they would do these things all their lives.
2. How many people - both on the high and low ends of the employability scale according to this study - are employed, but not in their major areas of study?
One person here remarked that his sister was a Psych major, and that every job she's had since graduation has been outside of the field of psychology. Fair enough, but the point is that she has been employed. I don't want to draw too many conclusions from that fact alone, especially without knowing the details, but it's at least worth considering the possibility that some degrees (especially in the bottom 25) are more general, and prepare people to perform many different types of jobs, whereas other degrees (especially in the top 25) prepare people to perform that one specific job and little else.
I have a friend who met his wife in college, and she majored in one of the Medical Technology fields, while most of her friends majored in general Nursing (the 2 most employable majors, according to the study). All of them got jobs right after graduation, and all of them left the medical profession within 3 years. They all got jobs doing other things. For example, my friend's wife has been a Travel Agent, a Real Estate Agent and a couple other things over the course of ten years as they started a family. Now their kids are getting older and she's back in the Medical Tech field she originally majored in, but only part time, and mostly just for the health benefits.
Her friends hated Nursing and have never returned. Most of them went into Pharmaceutical Sales, which is related to their original major, but which requires a radically different skill set. Those who naturally have a variety of skills in abundance are fortunate and can adapt to different professions. But Humanities and Liberal Arts majors train people to think, not simply to perform rote operations. Art, Literature, Philosophy, even Psychology, train students to be creative, think outside the box, analyze and adapt. In other words, these subjects teach people how to learn, which is the most valuable skill one can have. It makes these people eminently employable outside their "pure" area of study, even if it's difficult to get that across on a résumé.
3. Finally, I don't want to "psychologize" the very damning indictment of Psychology, but different subjects attract distinct personality types.
In other words, for the moment, let's remove education from the equation. Is it possible that the "head in the clouds" types are probably not going to get jobs anyway, and that the intensely practical type of person is going to do something "productive" regardless of whether their training is in school, on the job or in real life? Those who are inclined toward many different occupations will invariably pursue many different ones over their lifetimes. But those who aren't likely to do anything practical or specific in their careers, and those who can only do a few specific things because they are task-oriented, probably don't benefit much from education, or at least not from formal degrees. This isn't a reflection on those majors so much as a correlation between employability and personality types, as many "employable" people who major in Liberal Arts and Humanities go on to careers in Business, Management, Sales & Marketing, Law, etc., etc.
Well I'm boned.
Industrial Design. Aka comercial art.
Time to start making some homemade ceramic pipes again.
Industrial Design. Aka comercial art.
Time to start making some homemade ceramic pipes again.
tartanterrier
Is somewhere outhere.
I wish I had a college degree because if I had one,I'd go anywhere to do what I spent training to be.Rather than sit around
and take any shitty job to get me by until something arrived in my area.
In Scotland there seems to be too much of this,although when you see some of the folks that have them.You would think the
universities dish out degrees to anybody these days,as long as they pay for it
and take any shitty job to get me by until something arrived in my area.
In Scotland there seems to be too much of this,although when you see some of the folks that have them.You would think the
universities dish out degrees to anybody these days,as long as they pay for it
xfire
New Twitter/X @cxffreeman
You laugh because it makes you feel better as an uneducated asshat that college graduates are having trouble finding jobs.
