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
That’s why I explicitly qualified my statement, because not all sociologists are in fact trained in statistics. Many just had the statistics 101 class and went into the more philosophical part of the trade.
The real question is: what else does this graph show in your interpretation?
How does the graph not show that? The chart clearly shows there are a lot of degrees whose holders have “insufficient jobs for their training.”
I.e., they were unable to find jobs that utilized the skills they got with their degree. The skills are not sufficiently transferable to jobs.
I interpret it as there are more degree holders than there are jobs that closely align with that degree. Graduating art history majors are absolutely qualified to be curators at galleries and museums, but there are only a handful of those positions available.
Any decent sociology program will teach a hefty amount of statistics. That’s the basis of research.
Sometimes that’s the difference between a BA and BS
Sounds like a BA in sociology is a thing that shouldn’t exist.
Maybe the business world is the problem.
Or maybe we just don’t need hundreds of thousands of people trained in liberal arts.
I’m not trying to defend businesses here, but there’s only so many places for people who are trained in over-analyzing paint and clay.
Mathematics is liberal arts. So is economics.
Maybe I’m too European for that, but I was under the impression that this is basically an umbrella term for humanities, art, literature, etc.
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
I would say AI is coming for them - but then I am reminded of all the stories about nightmare clients pestering graphic designers endlessly for nonsense changes. Then I am reminded of Terminator and fear this is why the machines rise up.
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.
Edit: rereading the thread, I agree with your point that the graph is only showing which majors have high unemployment rates. Where that cause stems from (too many people with those majors for instance) isn’t the intention of the graph. Not certain I agree fully with your statement
But that doesn’t change the conclusions that can be drawn from the chart.
Is a liberal arts degree hard to get a job with because of too many people with the degree, or because there isn’t sufficient transferrable skills included in the degree? All we know is that these jobs aren’t best for securing a job after graduation.
I think we agree with each other. The only question the chart answers is whether or not these degree holders experience higher underemployment than the overall population. The question of why is irrelevant to this chart.
I was trying to disagree with the OPs skepticism that the chart is somehow misleading because it ignores the number of LA degree holder.
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.
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.
I never got my master’s degree. Meant to but MBA wouldn’t mean much in my current career. If you want to be more technical, have you looked into solution architecture type thing? Run the width rather than dive the depth.
I was starting to look into it but a rather lucrative offer into senior management came my way and it was too good to say no to.
BA in Cognitive Science and BS in Psychology here. Also software engineer.
BA in History. Now Code Monkey.
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.
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.
You’re right, but aerospace engineering is a very broad term, afaik, with many disciplines. Many do overlap between aviation and space flight, but I don’t really know if, hypothetically, a Boeing engineer could go work for spaceX, it would depend on the role I imagine.
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.
Geographic limitations. If your spouse has a good job outside of those areas, then there’s no work for you.
Tied to govt contracts. I know lots of ppl that got laid off in 2008. I dk about now.
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 understand. And you’re right, there are far fewer IT programs than CS programs. Especially for any form of degree. It’s actually been a frustration of mine to see so many IT related job postings with a heavy preference towards anyone holding a degree. There’s so few degrees level programs for IT that the only way to satisfy that requirement is to get a degree in CS, most of the time. CS isn’t IT.
The sad truth of it is that most people can’t differentiate between an IT specialist or someone in CS or development. Nevermind anything more specific than that, like an SQL/net/sys admin. I’m sure there’s just as many of the same or similar roles that people lump together into “tech person” on the CS/dev side, but I don’t know them nearly as well, since I’m firmly on the IT support side of things.
The point is that the entire field, for pretty much anyone who isn’t in it, or anyone who works directly with IT teams, is just one conglomerate of every “tech” person out there, as if any of my skills are transferable to development, or any developers skills are transferable to systems administration. So since there’s computer technology degrees, people with them must have more skills and somehow be better to hire than someone who doesn’t have such a degree… Which could not be further from the truth. People with more recent, real-world experience in IT, generally are better suited for jobs in IT than anyone fresh out of uni holding their bachelor’s in something, looking for an IT support role.
Which also brings me to industry certifications. I don’t love certifications because bluntly, most of them are certifying that you can use the certified device/system/software when it is working normally. I almost never encounter a ticket where someone is having a problem with a thing that’s working as it should. I have yet to encounter any certification that says that thing A can break in X, Y, and, Z ways, here’s how you fix each… Because if the vendor knows about the problems for long enough that it ends up in training materials, they probably should have solved the problem already.
On top of that, most industry certifications are valid for 2, maybe 3 years at most, and even if they didn’t expire, and even though most of the skills are transferable to any updated version of the same thing, generally the certification on that thing becomes irrelevant to have after a few years because the vendor releases a new thing. You were certified in VMware 7.5? Ha, get fucked, everyone is using VMware 8 now. Sucks to be you. Go do the cert all over again. Nothing of consequence changed, but you get to do it anyways. Sucker.
Because of this, even if you do industry certifications, you have to recertify every few years regardless just so you can put thing (version++) on your resume. It’s stupid.
I hold my vcp5 and vcp6 because they don’t expire anymore (VMware), and neither is useful because both VMware 5, and 6 are EOL. But I got those certs working for VMware as part of GSS. I know how things work very in-depth. The kind of knowledge that you can’t get from a certification. How to read logs to determine specific problems, how to troubleshoot and solve those problems, how the inner workings of the program actually do what they do. I can’t exactly express that on my resume beyond stating that I have an in-depth understanding of VMware and it’s infrastructure subsystems, which, I don’t know a hiring manager that will understand what that actually means, but they’ll see VMware 5/6 and be like, we’re using 8… And go hire a vcp8 instead though they have no deeper understanding of the product than what VMware discloses in their training; so when shit hits the fan, that vcp8 has no earthly idea where to even begin diagnosing the problem.
I don’t have the time to keep up on VMware certifications because I work with too many different technologies; I can’t dedicate months of my time to learning what VMware wants me to know about their product to recertify.
The problem isn’t just VMware. It’s everyone. I have my Cisco certification (CCNA) which is now expired, but Cisco hasn’t really made any changes that would require me to. In the mean time I’ve worked on countless Cisco routers and switches (among others) where my knowledge has been critical. On top of that, I’ve transposed those skills onto Juniper, watchguard, sonicwall, mikrotik, HP/Aruba… Many many others. Yet, my sonicwall certification is also expired by many years at this point, I have no certification in juniper, mikrotik, Aruba, or any others. So while I may know how to administrate those systems, without dedicating my life to continually obtaining and recertifing with them all the damned time, I’m not taken seriously. What a fucking joke.
Then some green beard with a CS degree walks in and my application is filed in the round bin with all the other rejects.
The stupid thing is, I have a 2-year diploma in computers/networking. I want a degree in IT, and I can’t get one, because even though degree programs for IT now exist, they’re only offered as in person, classroom courses, and at 40, with a mortgage, I can’t afford to take 4 years off of work to do the degree, just to be taken seriously. I want to take it part time/remote, and I could care less if it takes me 8 years to complete. But I can’t, because the option doesn’t exist. Most universities won’t even discuss making a plan with me because I’m not enrolled. I can’t enroll because there’s no course I could reasonably take without quitting my job to go to school full time. It’s infuriating.
All I really want is to sit down with someone from a college or uni that offers a degree in IT, and talk about how I could possibly accomplish it doing the majority of the work remotely. I can’t even get that. If I could get a quantum of help from these clowns, I could do it. I’m not lazy, I just don’t have any idea where to even start with getting the degree. Sigh.
Sorry for the rant, but the whole thing boils my blood. I’ve worked so hard and I’m stuck at mediocre pay for jobs that I don’t want to specialize in. I’m doing largely IT generalist work and I’m most interested in all avenues of networking. But I’m stuck here because nobody gives the generalist a chance to prove themselves as the network admin; meanwhile I’ve been the most skilled network person at several jobs; and when the NOC guys come to me for answers, I have to question my sanity.
IMO it comes down to CS being more theory-focused while IT is more practical application-focused. Practical application knowledge becomes dated very quickly in the tech field while the theories largely stay the same. New ones come along, but algorithms are still constructed largely the same, big O notation can still give a good idea at how an algorithm will scale (though IMO more attention should be paid to the constants because a 10n^2 algorithm will run much slower than a 2n^2 algorithm, even though big O notation treats them both as n^2), compilers, OSes, and CPUs still do essentially the same things.
My CS courses largely left it as individual study to learn languages or ways to use those theories for assignments. People who earned that degree had to learn to learn to get there.
My IT certification was a couple of mostly multiple choice tests that largely just involved regurgitating things we were told.
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.
It sorts by unemployment on the left side of the line, it’s just that the underemployment on the right is a much larger graph.
Yeah, well, what I’m trying to say is that the tech majors might have huge underemployment, but don’t make the cut to this chart due to not that many who are completely unemployed.
I just explained to you that the chart is sorted by complete unemployment on the left side.
At my university you could major in Computer Science wither through the Institute of Technology or College of Liberal Arts. Slightly different requirements and you got a BA through CLA instead of BS.
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
He told me a story of being at an astrophysics conference where the students got instructed to “look to the left” then “look to the right” before being told that only 1 in 10 of them would be able to make a living in that niche.
Yeah
Software isn’t so bad! You at least get a lot of time to cultivate interests/passions in other subjects…
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 mortalThis 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.
This is a good introduction to formal logic. It was required reading in my undergrad - https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Paul-Tomassi-Logic.pdf
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 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.
Full time is often defined as 32 hours per week.
Oh I see… In the two countries I worked in it was 40, ok then.
Colloquially it is 40 hours per week but for other purposes its somewhere between 30 and 40. Lot of places the cut off for benefits is 36 hours.
