For those of you getting ready to start your freshman year of college right about now, you've got a big decision to make that's slightly more important than deciding which frat to join: What will you major in?
Your college major can obviously influence your college experience and the rest of your life immensely. It's going to have a hand in determining what classes you take, who your friends are and what career you ultimately decide to pursue upon graduation. And with that, it may even determine whether you will be underemployed or not.
A recent survey has found the top 10 college majors that are most and least likely to make employees feel underemployed. PayScale, a salary information company, surveyed 68,000 employees about their feelings of underemployment.
The most underemployed majors are:
1. Criminal Justice
2. Business Management & Administration
3. Health Care Administration
4. General Studies
5. Sociology
6. English Language & Literature
7. Graphic Design
8. Liberal Arts
9. Education
10. Psychology
And the least underemployed majors are:
1. Civil & Environmental Engineering
2. Aerospace Engineering
3. Computer Engineering
4. Chemical Engineering
5. Law
6. Physics
7. Mechanical Engineering
8. Electrical Engineering
9. Geology
10. Mathematics
You either feel great or terrible about your degree now, don't you? As expected, many of the majors most likely to feel underemployed are in the humanities. However, what's surprising is the high rate of those who were Business Management & Administration majors that feel underemployed. One would think that an undergraduate business degree often leads to solid jobs with high wages. However on the flipside, PayScale notes that having an advanced degree, such as an MBA, might actually help students achieve more job satisfaction. So it seems like when it comes to bussiness, it's a bit of an all-or-nothing type of scenario.
As for the majors that are least likely to feel underemployed, clearly we all should have gotten a STEM degree. PayScale notes that these majors tend to teach the specific skills that are needed in the workplace, and graduates in these fields are highly in demand in the job market.
Underemployment sort of has a subjective definition. It could mean being underpaid, working at a job where you don't use your education, training or skills or not working a full work week. Overall, 43 percent of survey respondents said they are underemployed. Women were most likely to say they were underemployed (48 percent compared to 39 percent of male respondents), and Millennials also felt like they were underemployed more than Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers.
We should all remember that this is a survey, so these results can't necessarily be projected for all Americans. But they do provide an interesting look at the current job landscape, nonetheless. Plus, those who didn't end up on the list of degrees most likely to feel underemployed can finally tell their parents, "I told you so."
