New Georgetown University Report Reveals the Best (and Worst) Majors for Getting a Job

Don't Worry – This is Great News for English Majors...

Today, I saw a Georgetown University report about unemployment rates for recent college graduates. Data for each major was compared to the national average.

What this report said was good news for English Majors!

According to the data, the majors with the highest unemployment rates were architecture, social science, and art. The unemployment rates for these “bad” majors? About 10%.

Overall, all majors are seeing unemployment decline now that the recession is wearing off.

Further encouraging news for English Majors: the report doesn’t take into account grads who go into fields not traditionally associated with their major, meaning English Majors who leverage their skills into a different field might not have been counted (and that the unemployment rate for English grads might be lower than reported.)

Here is the data for English Majors:

In my opinion, unemployment rates for English Majors will continue to drop… at least for the next few years or until the next economic recession.

A different chart revealed 2011-2012 unemployment rates for humanities and liberal arts majors at the following:

• 8.4% for recent grads

• 5.8% for experienced college grads

• 5.0% for recent grad degree holders

• 3.6% for experienced grad degree holders – even lower than communications/journalism majors

Another section of the report had good news about post-recession earnings recovery:

"Starting earnings for graduates, whether they are Bachelor’s or graduate degree holders, are naturally lower than earnings for their experienced counterparts, but should increase as the recovery moves toward full employment in 2017. . . . Even in the midst of a lackluster recovery, college degrees have retained their earnings value."

This is simply more proof the old myths about choosing English as a major (such as how you’ll never get a job) simply aren’t true. The vast majority of English Majors are employed.

Plus, if you get experience before you graduate, you can skip over the recent grad (“no experience”) group and jump into more appealing work.

Now whether you get experience or not before you graduate is up to you...

With this good news, have a great weekend!