We often hear from new college grads that they’re not sure what kind of jobs are relevant to their college major. The beauty of many entry-level jobs is that your college major doesn’t matter much at all. There are a ton of jobs out there that will let you start fresh; but what if you feel committed to trying to put your education to good use? A few months ago we added tags to all of our posts to make it easier for you to navigate the hundreds of entry-level employers whom we’ve featured. In this post we’re going to link those tags to specific college majors.
Our list of college majors comes directly from the 2004-2005 U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Higher Education General Information Survey. We’ve also included the number of graduates for each major to give you an idea of what kind of competition you’re facing. The tags pages that we’ve linked to our based our opinions of which employers match up best with each educational background.
1,439,264 undergraduate received Bachelors degrees during the 2004-2005 school year. Below you will find the distribution of new graduates in each major and the types of jobs that we think might appeal to them. This is a work in progress, so please leave comments and suggestion on anything that may be miscategorized or left out.
Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Conservation (23,002 new grads)
Architecture (9,237 new grads)
Area, ethnic, cultural, and gender studies (7,569 new grads)
Biological and biomedical sciences (64,611 new grads)
Business (311,574 new grads)
- Account Management
- Accounting
- Advertising
- Analyst
- Business Development
- Consulting
- Finance
- Food
- Hospitality Management
- Human Resources
- Investment
- Marketing
- Merchandising
- Operations
- Product Management
- Recruiting
- Research
Communication, journalism, and related programs (72,715 new grads)
- Account Management
- Advertising
- Communications
- Consulting
- Editorial
- Journalism
- Marketing
- Public Relations
- Social Networking
- Television
- Training
- Video
- Writing
Communications technologies (2,523 new grads)
Computer and information sciences (54,111 new grads)
Education (105,451 new grads)
Engineering (64,906 new grads)
Engineering technologies (14,837 new grads)
English language and literature/letters (54,379 new grads)
Family and consumer sciences/human sciences (20,074 new grads)
Foreign languages, literatures, and linguistics (18,386 new grads)
Health professions and related clinical sciences (80,685 new grads)
Legal professions and studies (3,161 new grads)
Liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities (43,751 new grads)
Library science (76 new grads)
Mathematics and statistics (14,351 new grads)
Military technologies (40 new grads)
Multi/interdisciplinary studies (30,243 new grads)
- You designed your own major, you can figure it out yourself.
Parks, recreation, leisure and fitness studies (22,888 new grads)
Philosophy and religious studies (11,584 new grads)
Physical sciences and science technologies (18,905 new grads)
Precision production (64 new grads)
Psychology (85,614 new grads)
Public administration and social services (21,769 new grads)
Security and protective services (30,723 new grads)
Social sciences and history (156,892 new grads)
Theology and religious vocations (9,284 new grads)
Transportation and materials moving (4,904 new grads)
Visual and performing arts (80,955 new grads)
Have any input? Leave a comment.
is the funniest, most in-your-face career guide on the market.
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Trying to connect major with job is one of those fruitless, discouraging pursuits that overlooks the way the world has always worked. If you want to be a doctor, they you need medical course work. Beyond something as specific as that, most professionally tracked jobs require either general liberal arts and/or math skills (e.g., enough command of rhetoric to write a targeted persuasive letter), “knacks” that people either have or don’t, or specific, procedural skills that must be learned on the job anyway.
Barbara, it’s true that it can often be a fruitless pursuit to match jobs to college majors, but I think you’re overlooking a wide range of jobs that do rely on or can helped by college coursework. I have a background in Industrial and Labor Relations, and although I could be doing what I’m doing without it, it’s helped a lot. Most engineers rely on their education every day for their jobs. Accountants too. This list isn’t meant to say, if you majored in this, then you should do this. It’s more of a guide for students who want to put their educations to use, or at least who want to consider doing so.
I really look at my major as a starting point (economics and finance) and I’m looking across a number of industries and areas to find where I’d like to continue forward. When I look at successful people (like my parents) I see that while their careers have definitely followed a path, its not always linear. I know that my mom has enjoyed making jumps from one area to another but has told me that she always uses what she’s learned from each and every job (and from all of her degrees).
Its really helpful for me to see what is the most interesting ’starting point.’ At this point in my life, I’m a little more flexible and open to relocating. In fact, its a good time to explore living in different parts of the U.S. I’ve been using this site called Employment Crossing (www.employmentcrossing.com), and its been pretty thorough. I can spend hours perusing the different jobs there because it covers all industries and just about every single part of the country. As I look in different industries, I also look at some of the mid-level openings to get an idea of what my next few steps after this first one will be. Right now I’m using the free trial period, but the information is pretty valuable. Its a good resource for people starting out like me, more so than the typical monster sites, etc.
Thanks for all your tips! I enjoy them and I use them!!!!
I agree that it is often a fruitless pursuit to match jobs to college majors. I acts as a lead guiding the people for their life. I have seen many who hold a job that do not match their major. The information in this website is valuable and I could definitely recommend this website for the group who are like me.
Good Work and good tips.
I was just send an article on Careers That Pay for Humanities Majors> It’s another source for ideas of what to do with your major.