While going to college tends to mean better pay, not all degrees guarantee high salaries — especially if you study liberal arts.
That’s according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which shows that graduates who major in education, social work or the arts tend to earn the lowest median incomes within five years of finishing school. The analysis includes only full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree and excludes those still enrolled in school.
The salary figures are based on 2023 data, the most recent available, and show early-career pay in these fields falls below the U.S. median wage of $48,060 for that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While engineering majors can make upward of $80,000 early in their careers, many liberal arts and education majors earn closer to $40,000. The median salary of all majors examined was $50,000.
Here’s a look at the 10 majors linked to the lowest median salaries for full-time workers ages 22 to 27.
While learning a foreign language is a valuable skill, a degree in the subject doesn’t always lead to high-paying roles. That’s likely because language can be learned outside a formal education and many graduates tend to go into relatively low-paying fields, like education, translation or public service.
Liberal arts majors also tend to earn less than graduates in technical fields like engineering or math, largely because there’s less demand for their skills in higher-paying industries like technology and finance.
Unfortunately, many liberal arts majors don’t fare much better as they get older, especially those in education. Here’s a look at the 10 lowest-paying majors for full-time workers between ages 35 and 45.
Early childhood education majors earn the least of all mid-career graduates, with a median income of $49,000 — just $8,000 more than what they earned five years after graduation.
By contrast, engineering majors typically break into six figures by mid-career.
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