US Majors With The Highest Unemployment/UnderEmployment Rates

I'd be really interested to see the specifics of how that data is collected, but also fucking duh recent college grads are underemployed. Also, having that degree sets people up for career advancement as they gain experience and that educational background becomes even more of a prerequisite for the jobs they're moving into

If you are employed in a junior job within the field you have been trained in, you are not underemployed.

What this graph shows however, is that there are a ton of degrees that seem to teach hardly any transferable skills. A sociologist without proper statistical training has almost zero value in the business world. And that's a problem.
- What this graph shows however, is that there are a ton of degrees that seem to teach hardly any transferable skills
  
  This graph absolutely does not show this lol...how could you possibly derive that from this graph
  
  And sociologists are absolutely trained in statistics
- Any decent sociology program will teach a hefty amount of statistics. That's the basis of research.
- Maybe the business world is the problem.

Graphic Design being low demand has always confused me.

Graphic design is really hard to do well, and there's a ton of legitimate need for it. After all, every business needs a logo and a few print ads.

But maybe there's just not much demand for doing it well?

I could believe that. I've seen plenty of small business logos and print ads that were obviously done by someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

Or is there just a massive oversupply because that's where all the extra art history students retrain?

I'm going to guess it's not oversupply, because, again, those mom and pop businesses would have decent logos, right?

I dunno.. I'm genuinely curious how a trade that's that hard to get really good at has such high unemployment.

I guess the aerospace degree has the same thing going, according to this chart.

Because nobody wants to pay for it. “That’s easy, I’ll just do it myself”. Surprisedpikachu when it doesn’t go over as desired, but they saved a couple bucks.
Even if every business got a professional logo , they only need to do it once. And for small places, the budget for getting a logo is maybe a few grand tops. New businesses are created all the time, but is it enough to keep all of the graphic designers busy?
- Web stuff needs graphic design also, and movie industry
Wouldn't be surprised if there is an oversupply due to it being a popular field people want to get into, due older people loving the work too much to retire, and due to nepotism/favouring of inexperienced friends/kids of friends in the hiring processes.
While everyone needs graphic design work I can't imagine everyone needs a steady supply of it. There's no maintenance aspect to keep the job going either. A few designers can serve very many customers full time
- There are a few industries that require a full-time graphic designer. It's usually underpaid and overworked but they exist.
  
  The companies are usually flip-flopping from doing it in-house to contracting it out. Usually every 4-5 years when a new executive parasite comes along. So lots of career uncertainty for most graphic designers.
  
  It also doesn't help the industry that for decades, predatory schools have been pushing out "graphical designers" as an easy fast degree. This has saturated the job market with lots of poorly trained people producing crap work.
These numbers seem wrong. we struggle to get aerospace enginners, physics etc. and the graphic art people are needed for web and movie industry. Maybe this is just graduatee degree vs somebody doing a second major and finding another career?
Anecdotal, my former room mate is a Graphics Designer. They are fairly successful now, but have been struggling with their business for a decade before they got where they are. And still have tremendous debt to pay off (both business and school). They work twelve hours a day. Often works on the weekend as well. Plus they have a teaching gig now at heir former college. Along with the occasional exhibition for their art.

They've burnt out at least twice along the way. Both times it has cost them their relationship. But I have tremendous respect for them for doing the level of hustle that you'd expect from a wallstreet stockbroker on speed or coke.

I need the top ten majors with the lowest unemployment rates to make a judgement in this plot.

Why is physics on this list? Seems a bit of of place

A lot seems out of place.

Is it useful to know that liberal arts majors are 7.9 unemployed without the larger context of how many liberal arts majors there are?

I might not be explaining myself well, but it feels like there is an error with the chart. Not exactly the same type of write you get from every map of x thing just being another population density map, but the same type of error for not adjusting for that type of thing.

I'm other words, I thought liberal arts was the most common major so I would've expected it to be closer to the national average.
- The total number of LA holders is irrelevant since everything is presented on a percentage basis. The fact that it isn't close to the national average is evidence of being different from the overall population.
  
  Although, I suppose an overabundance of LA degree holders could lead to higher unemployment. But that doesn't change the conclusions that can be drawn from the chart.
How many physicists do you know? There are only so many research labs out there. The physics majors probably do better than w art history majors because they can often pivot to something like software development.
I majored in physics, even living in a country with a ton of technology companies. There are only so many research labs, and only very few companies want dedicated physics people. Often they just want to run a mechanical simulation known as FEM, they hire mechanical engineers for it.

Also, physics is very broad. While companies are usually looking into a specific topic. If you didnt happen to stumble in the right area of physics you might not have valuable knowledge for a company. Often a Physics education is not even focused on deepening a specific topic, but more on how to solve complex problems. In my opinion that can be applied to many problems we face today, if given the chance.

Physics education is based on the idea of a renaissance man, one who knows how everything works. Companies simply don't care about that.
Seems like "Business" and "Communications" degrees should be included.
Because physics graduates have a high unemployment rate compared to other degrees. So how is it out of place? Not all stem degrees are good for getting a job. There aren’t many careers where a physics degree gives you directly marketable skills. You either go into physics research or astronomy research, and you need a phd for both. Most people with a physics degree end up having to spend time specializing in something else.

Why would a company hire an engineer with a physics degree when they can an engineer with an engineering degree? Physics is a very generalist field.
You’d think people with engineering degrees would have a wide swath of jobs to choose from. Physics is a huge field, and the math is applicable to a lot of things. Same with aerospace. I’d think aerospace people could get jobs in the military or automotive industries. Not just NASA or Boeing.

Why aerospace engineering? Is it because people want more mechanical engineering instead and not something so niche?

Boeing fired them all so there is an oversupply of them in the market

Joking, maybe...idk

But space engineering should be booming right now, I'm surprised to see that as well. My specific degree is in aviation fields and I'm surprised it's not on here. No one I know is using theirs.
- Wouldn't the engineering for space fall outside of aeronautics? There would be overlap if a craft is meant to enter and exit the atmosphere, but it seems like a trade that would require a large set of disciplines to do properly.
It's the equivalent of "become a Hollywood superstar" for engineering specialties. Lots of grads chasing relatively few positions in the industry -- many will ultimately take positions working in related engineering fields like mechanical or automotive engineering, but at the end of the day the aerospace sector just doesn't develop enough new products to employ all the grads coming out of school with a degree.
- Damn, at all the engineering conferences I've been too there are military contractors all over the place promoting aerospace engineering and wanting more grads to come working for them. Long lines of people waiting to get a chance to work with Raytheon, Lockhead, Northrup, etc.
Tied to govt contracts. I know lots of ppl that got laid off in 2008. I dk about now.

I was almost an art history major. Majored in philosophy instead. I'm a software engineer.

CS major. Do not code. Forgot all of it. Ironically ended up back in software tech somehow. Still no coding though.
- CS major. Do not code. Somehow project management. Send help.
  
  Trying to work back to something more technical but the salary cut seems bleak for my realistic rusty skill level. Will probably have to go for a masters of some kind.
Everyone I know who studied English in undergrad is a coder now. Everyone I know who studied it in grad school is a high school teacher now.
BA in Cognitive Science and BS in Psychology here. Also software engineer.
- BA in History. Now Code Monkey.

Surprised to not see computer tech majors on here. I have a degree in IT and have to compete with people more experienced than me for jobs that pay a dollar or two an hour more than retail jobs. I'm going for a degree in computer engineering now but I'm starting to doubt if this is a good path.

IMO, it's a lack of diversity in the computer science field as a major.

Everyone I know who has gone to university for a computer related program has been taking development/programming.

Certainly programming is important in computer science, but there's substantially more disciplines in computer science than development. Any courses in computer science that are not development are few and far between. With the volume of CS programs being so small, can you really be surprised that it didn't make the list?
- As related as they are, though, CS and IT are still separate disciplines so idk, as much as some CS people are struggling to find work too, I feel like CS people specializing in development isn't super relevant to the struggles of an IT person looking for IT work since only a minority of IT grads go on to become developers.
  
  Although one way that CS grads can have an effect on IT people's employment chances I think—anecdotally, in a way that applies to my local area at least—is that fresh CS grads are preferred over fresh IT grads for IT roles, and often better paying ones. But more experience and/or having the right certifications can give anyone an edge on either side. The catch is there's usually far less people graduating with a CS degree than an IT diploma, and only a fraction of them are interested in an IT track career.
  
  Where I'm from IT is usually a 2 year diploma at the local college, or at most an associate's degree and there wouldn't really be a path to further that academically by doing, like, a master's degree or whatever which limits the options of IT grads but also makes them less desirable I guess as the education isn't as rigorous. According to Google, other parts of the country offer a full on IT bachelor's but at that point I'd be asking why someone used that 4 years on a vocational degree that's pretty limiting instead of an academic or engineering degree. Anyone with a technical skillset can learn IT on the job, but a proper CS, CE, or SWE curriculum is difficult.
  
  To be clear, I don't disagree with what you said it just felt disconnected from the context of IT employment.
I have a degree in IT and have to compete with people more experienced than me for jobs that pay a dollar or two an hour more than retail jobs

In my experience the places paying barely more than retail wages are not hiring people with extensive resumes but mostly hiring people straight out of college. Places paying ~$20+ are where you're probably competing with more experienced folks

Make sure you're on LinkedIn, and also don't discount uploading your resume to Indeed and marking yourself as looking for work on both. For as long as I've been working in the industry I've had recruiters contacting me on both platforms with various opportunities for contracts and employment.

Also work with your college/university and your instructors to be referred for openings. Often employers will reach out to colleges with IT programs when there's openings in IT
Yeah IT specifically is pretty rough. Part of the challenge is that for pretty much every company it's considered a cost center that they want to do everything in their power to minimize, rather than an important part of their business (obviously some exceptions apply, e.g, the company provides IT services to other companies as a service offering).

Assuming you want to go into software/hardware development of some kind, computer engineering should be a solid bet, I wouldn't worry.
It's either not considered a major or it's a part of the Liberal Arts degree path, like most math and science courses before specialization often are. Sometimes degrees for specific professions and technical training require a major, but they themselves are not majors in the USA.

A big part of this is lack of centralization. The federal government requires schools to have federally accredited coursework for tax purposes, and the accrediting process is done by several non-public entities, beyond that they can technically structure their courses, credits, and degree paths however they like.

For example, Physics and Aerospace Engineering require Liberal Arts majors like math and science as prerequisites, and the same is true for Commercial Art and Graphic Design's relationship to Fine Arts majors.
- I am having a hard time believing someone would group Computer Science & Computer Engineering with Liberal Art.
  
  It's also possible these computer tech majors are not as badly unemployed as the other ones. I noticed that while the chart includes the underemployment rate, it doesn't sort by it.

Physics

Most depressing colleague I ever had was a dude who'd done a masters by research discovering new planets with powerful instruments that detected tiny variations in the light levels in far off solar systems. You could discover new heavenly bodies based off the cadence and degree of occlusion that occurs for that solar system's star.

Basically this guy was no longer able to progress with astrophysics because the competition for positions/funding was so intense. He'd ended up as a software dev but all he talked about was new planets and he spent every lunch break looking at the raw data from these instruments which were published into the public domain that day.

He had a calling but the world had torn him away from it.
- Yeah im terrified that'll be me oneday. Im also probably gonna get my PhD in either physics or astrophysics
- The fate of most academics. After a falling out with my phd advisor, i went a completely different route and managed to build a solid career.
"Where's yer fancy math now?!"

I see "aerospace engineering" and the Boeing quakity issues just fall into place.

I double majored in History of Art and Philosophy for my undergrad.

Surprisingly philosophy led on quite neatly to a career in software development. Especially analytic philosophy is all about breaking down complex problems into premises and a conclusion. Sometimes it's algorithmic in the sense that premise 4 might refer you back to premise 2.

That's super interesting to me, any references for a software person who wants to find some overlap with philosophy? I know very little about the subject.
- I suppose studying basic formal logic would be a good place to start because that is the place where there is the most overlap. In philosophy an argument can be 'valid' by conforming to certain conditions such as
  
  P1: All men are mortal P2: Socrates is a man C: Socrates is mortal
  
  This is an example of deductive reasoning where the form or structure of the argument guarantees the conclusion to be true. Process is called 'deductive' reasoning where a conclusion is drawn from the truth of the premises. The ancient Greeks called this a syllogism.
  
  Computer programs are similar in the sense that they are using formal logic with tokens that represent variables to the compiler. Given these arguments exist; we can perform these operations and get a specific result.
  
  As an aside the counterpart to deductive reasoning is inductive reasoning. That's where the premises may be true but the conclusion might not necessarily follow from them. People throw around the word 'fallacy' quite often online but essentially every fallacy is just an example of inductive reasoning where the premises do not guarantee the conclusion. Philosophers study different types of formal fallacies like 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' (because this happens, something else ought to happen) since there are different ways where combinations of premises can lead to an untrustworthy conclusion.
  
  Intriguingly all science is speculative and uses inductive reasoning where we infer from what data we gain in experiments to a conclusion of what might be happening, however there is no logical guarantee that experiment results will be true. There's even a thesis called pessimistic meta induction which states that: Given all scientific theories we held in the past have been proven false (or refined to a slightly different conclusion), we can safely assume that every scientific theory we currently hold is 'false' in some sense.

What is Liberal Arts? There are many majors that could be considered part of the liberal arts, but never seen an actual liberal arts major.

You can major in Liberal Arts at some schools, but many call it General Studies. It's basically for when you can't decide on a major.

This smells a lot like . . . not bullshit as much as . . . bullfart?

The Art History majors? Yeah I know what you mean.

Dumbass me saw "unemployment" and "underemployment", and went "huh? un-de-re-mployment? what's that?? that's a lot of prefixes". Turns out it's just under-employment

Un-redeployment. When you put boots on the ground, but it's not a war
- Under-redeployment. When you don't put enough boots on the ground and it's still not a war.
That’s kinda like how “underbed” was for me; like, how do you underb something? Or derb it in the first place, for that matter?

"Underemployment is when workers are working less than full-time" that's such a shitty reference, I'll take every opportunity to NOT work 40 hours a week even if it means getting by with less money. Let me experience life a little, goddamn

I find it neat that they include Commercial Art and Graphic Design as being separate from Fine Arts majors, and the same for Aerospace Engineering as separate from Liberal Arts or Physics majors.

I find that a bit misleading. Me and my gf both work only 4 days a week (aka not full-time). I'd say it barely makes a difference in our field when we're tired on Fridays rotting at work or home.

The Liberal Arts being a joke degree holds up.

Only if the only point of college is to get a job.

There's more to life than work and a good liberal arts degree exposed you to a lot of it.

... It's not worth 200k of debt but it's great to learn.
- Only if the only point of college is to get a job.
  
  When it comes with that 200K of debt the ONLY point is to get a job. Employers want employees with degrees because degrees come with debt and people who are in debt are less likely to quit a shitty job.
In my mind it’s not so much a joke degree inasmuch as it really relies on the student to have their own plan for employment and the usefulness of the degree.

Some people have connections, ideas, outside the box thinking, or independent wealth.
Sounds about right coming from… vlad of 1976