A study just released by the
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce lays out the employment prospect for recent college graduates. The Georgetown report used the American Community Survey (ACS)
data from 2010 and 2011 for its analysis. For recent graduates, it
looked at 22- to 26-year-olds who had bachelor’s degrees, and for more
experienced college graduates it looked at 30- to 54-year-olds with college degrees. The report offers a reminder that while lots of young people will spend
an inordinate amount of time deciding where to go to college, it’s
perhaps more important to figure out your major once you get there. That decision can have a life long impact of your ability to find a job once you graduate.
For example, in the graphic below which comes from the report you can see the recent majors with the lowest and highest overall unemployment rates. For example, Information System, Architecture and Anthropology degrees have the hardest time finding employment, while students getting a bachelors in Nursing, Elementary Education, and Parks and Recreation/Physical Fitness have the best chance of finding jobs right away.
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Taking the analysis a step further, the report looks at employment prospects within majors by whether the graduate has any work experience as well as if they may have gotten a graduate degree. It's interesting to see how those with some sort of work experience in their chosen field fare so much better than those that don't.
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Of course this is all national level data. To provide a local perspective, below you will find two tables. The first provides a breakdown of the types of majors for people holding bachelors degrees in both Herkimer and Oneida Counties. The second shows the basic majors held by men versus women.
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