The Real Story Behind the “Underemployed Liberal Arts Graduate” Narrative

According to the Atlantic magazine, it isn’t primarily liberal arts graduates who are getting marooned on the shores of underemployment:

When you do the math on the supposed underemployment number against the number of degrees awarded by major, “Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services” left far more people high and dry on job success.

With a five-year 31% underemployment rate according to Burning Glass, and a massive 601,092 degrees passed out in 2016, business and related majors produced a staggering 186,339 people with a degree and no corresponding college-level job. Counting the initial underemployment rate for business and related majors of 47%, a whopping 282,513 were underemployed in 2016.

The “Health Professions” data is head-scratching since we know that in 2015, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted, “Healthcare support occupations and healthcare practitioners and technical occupations are projected to be the two fastest-growing occupational groups, adding a combined 2.3 million jobs, about 1 in 4 new jobs” by 2024. But according to the report, “Health Professions and Related Programs” majors were second worst, leaving 154,915 with degrees but without good jobs after five years. Education and Psychology were third and fourth with 99,597 and 61,647 graduates without good jobs respectively.

If you believe the Burning Glass data, those four majors alone – business, health professionals, education, and psychology – put more than half a million people in the underemployed camp. And given that the 21 selected majors in the Burning Glass report totaled 904,000 underemployed graduates after five years, just those four majors accounted for more than half (56%) of the underemployed in the study.

Read the rest here.