With college graduation season in full swing, many students are beginning their journey into the professional world. While those first steps into the vast unknown of a career can be exciting, the current employment landscape is also one fraught with uncertainty.
A report released earlier this year from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sheds light on what a student can expect, both opportunity-wise and financially, depending on what they majored in.
From foreign languages to physics
According to the report, foreign language and performing arts majors can expect to start their careers with the lowest financial gains, at $40,000 and $41,900, respectively. For reference, the average American household spends $61,334 on expenses annually, according to World Population Review.
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When foreign language and performing arts majors hit their mid-career median wage, they can expect to barely surpass the $61,000 average yearly expense, with an annual income of $70,000 each.
Health services, meanwhile, hit an even lower mid-career median threshold of $65,000, while professionals in that field begin their careers with an average salary of $45,000.
Of the 74 industries profiled in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s analysis, 19 of them meet or exceed the $100,000 threshold by mid-career, including various fields in engineering, business analytics, economics and finance, construction services, computer science, physics and international affairs.
Unemployment vs. higher salaries
Incidentally, unemployment rates for performing arts majors hover around 2.7%, relative to criminal justice careers at 2.9% and medical technicians at 2.8%. Some of those higher-grossing jobs, however, have higher rates of unemployment, including architecture (4.3%), computer engineering (7.5%), information systems and management (5.6%), and physics (7.8%).
At 0.4%, nutrition sciences has the lowest average unemployment rate, compared to anthropology at 9.4%.
The analysis, which looks at data from the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics going back to 1990, also notes that the median salary for recent college graduates dropped slightly in 2024 to $60,000, after hitting a high of $61,772 a year prior.
‘I just feel pretty screwed’
In an interview with NBC News, Allison Shrivastava, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, said entry-level prospects are “pretty frozen,” adding, “A lot of employers and job seekers are both kind of deer-in-headlights, not sure what to do.”
Add to all of this the fact that more than 5.3 million Americans with student loans could see shrinking paychecks in the coming months, following changes implemented by the Department of Education, and it’s safe to say the future for new college graduates has lost some of its luster.
“I just feel pretty screwed as it is right now,” Julia Abbott, a psychology major who graduated in May told NBC News. “I can’t really celebrate my past four years. It just feels really scary, like walking into this world and not having something set out for me.”