WASHINGTON – Wondering what to major in?
If you’re a college student wondering what you’ll do after you graduate, it might be good to know that young workers with degrees in agriculture, mining, teaching and medicine are in high demand. So are those who studied physics or chemistry. But if you major in architecture or a social science, you might find it hard to get a job when you graduate.
That’s all according to a new report from researchers at Georgetown University. They found that while the unemployment rate for recent college graduates stood at 7.5 percent in 2012, not all majors gave students an equal chance of finding work. Just 5.1 percent of elementary education majors, 4.8 percent of nursing majors and 4.5 percent of chemistry majors were unemployed after graduating, to take a few specific fields.
Compared with these graduates, those who studied architecture or the social sciences are about twice as likely to be unemployed, with one in 10 young workers out of a job.
The recession has been especially hard for these fields, said economist Anthony Carnevale, one of the authors of the report.
The collapse of construction and the housing sector has left architects out of work, while social scientists often work in government and not-for-profit organizations, which saw their revenues evaporate.
The good news for young college graduates is that regardless of their major, they have a much better chance of finding work than their peers who didn’t go to college. Nearly 18 percent of young workers with just a high school diploma were unemployed.
Recent college graduates are even doing better than experienced workers who only have a high school diploma, 9.9 percent of whom were out of work.
