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.
Any decent sociology program will teach a hefty amount of statistics. That’s the basis of research.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
