Anthropology Tops List of Hardest Majors to Turn Into a Job

Anthropology graduates face the highest unemployment rate of any college major, at 7.9%. 

Their median early career salary is $45,000. 

This data comes from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau and American Community Survey (IPUMS).

According to the data, unemployment among recent college graduates generally stands at 5.6%. 

But it becomes a different story when you sort the unemployment by majors. 

Over 70 majors were tracked by their unemployment rates; however, today’s visualization focuses on the top 30 with the highest rates. 

• The two highest-paying fields for recent college graduates (Computer Science and Computer Engineering) are also two of the hardest to land a job in right now.
• From the list of the top 30 majors with the highest unemployment rate, Mechanical Engineering and Miscellaneous Biological Science have the lowest rates

CONTEXT MATTERS HERE: 

What the data reveals is less a story about which subjects are worth studying and more a story about a labour market that is struggling to absorb new degree holders across a surprisingly wide range of fields.