How Risky is Your Degree?

Key Takeaways

• We analyzed labor‑market outcomes across dozens of undergraduate majors to understand how early‑career unemployment, underemployment, and credential‑attainment patterns differ across fields.

• STEM fields generally posting lower unemployment and underemployment with higher mid‑career wages.

• Majors in the humanities, social sciences, and arts exhibit structurally higher underemployment.

• Our next step is to use this combined dataset to support clearer program evaluation, visualize career‑readiness disparities, and inform policy recommendations for advising, curriculum alignment, and targeted student support.

Introduction

Students' post‑graduation opportunities vary significantly by major, shaped by labor‑market demand and the value of advanced degrees. This analysis aims to summarize where graduates experience the strongest and weakest economic outcomes, focusing on unemployment and underemployment patterns across three time periods.

The goal is to provide leaders, advisors, and workforce‑strategy teams with a comparative frame for identifying academic programs that may require enhanced career services, stronger employer partnerships, or revised curricular pathways to improve student trajectories.

1. Underemployment is widespread outside STEM, with several majors showing chronic vulnerability

• Underemployment levels among non‑STEM majors frequently exceed those of STEM fields by tens of percentage points.

• Several majors in the social sciences, humanities, and creative arts record consistently high underemployment, reflecting the broader challenge of aligning generalist degrees with specific labor‑market needs.

• STEM majors display more stable underemployment patterns over time, with engineering and computer‑related fields among the most resilient.

2. STEM pathways show the most consistently strong employment outcomes

• Majors such as engineering, computer science, biochemistry, and mathematics sustain lower unemployment, more favorable early‑career wage profiles, and a higher likelihood of long‑term job alignment.

• These fields generally require and reward technical specialization, which contributes to stronger labor‑market matching and reduced risk of working outside one’s degree field.

• By contrast, business‑adjacent majors display more varied outcomes, reflecting broader differences in student skill sets, employer expectations, and market saturation.

  
  

3. Liberal Arts & Business majors experience greater volatility across labor‑market cycles

• Social science, communications, and arts majors show more dramatic swings in both unemployment and underemployment across the three observed time points.

• These fluctuations may reflect economic sensitivity in media, nonprofit, government, and service‑oriented sectors, where hiring tends to contract during downturns and expand during recovery.

• Graduates in these fields may need stronger access to internships, applied learning opportunities, or certification pathways to remain competitive.

  
  

4. Graduate‑degree attainment plays a meaningful role in career stability

• Across many majors—especially biological sciences, physical sciences, and humanities—students with a graduate degree see significantly improved alignment between degree and occupation.

• Patterns suggest that, in several disciplines, a bachelor’s degree alone is insufficient to achieve consistent employment in the intended field.

• Understanding where graduate credentials most strongly influence outcomes can help institutions refine advising, program design, and graduate‑school preparation.

5. Why this analysis matters

Institutions and policymakers need clear evidence about which majors place students at structural labor‑market risk. This dataset provides a unified lens that highlights:

• majors with persistently high unemployment or underemployment,

• fields where additional career‑readiness supports could substantially narrow gaps, and

• programs that may require stronger employer partnerships or curricular modernization.

  
  

By comparing categories such as STEM and Liberal Arts & Business, stakeholders gain visibility into systemic differences that shape students’ long‑term economic mobility.

Discussion

The patterns across unemployment, underemployment, and degree‑attainment metrics reveal meaningful insights into how academic programs prepare students for the workforce.

STEM majors generally offer more predictable returns, while non‑STEM majors exhibit considerable heterogeneity, highlighting the importance of nuanced advising and targeted interventions.

This analysis supports strategic planning by demonstrating where the risk of job mismatch is highest and where investments in experiential learning, industry partnerships, or graduate‑school preparation would yield the greatest impact.

Recommended Actions

• Programs with consistently elevated underemployment levels should receive expanded dedicated career coaching, employer engagement pipelines, and applied learning opportunities.

• Embedding data literacy, digital tools, and industry‑aligned credentials into social science, humanities, and communications majors could improve graduate competitiveness.

• Majors with large gaps between bachelor’s‑only and graduate‑degree outcomes should integrate earlier and more structured graduate‑school planning.

• Institutions should use dashboards and annual briefings to help students understand employment trends before selecting majors or concentrations.

• Service, arts, and communications programs may benefit from multi‑year partnerships with employers in growth sectors to stabilize student placement pipelines.

Data

The brief above uses your provided combined dataset, including:

• Underemployment and unemployment rates across majors

• Categorization of majors into STEM vs. Liberal Arts & Business

• Three-year comparisons (2019, 2021, 2026)

• Related metrics from your expanded tables (where relevant for interpretation)