Do you guys think this is true about Computer/Management Information Systems?
The unemployment rate for recent grads with a degree in information systems is more than double that of drama and theater majors, at 14.7% vs. 6.4%, according to a recent Georgetown University study. Even for computer science majors, the jobless rate for recent grads nears 9%.
Many drama and theater majors are employed at Starbucks.
I’ve been wondering how the gargantuan number of CS & IT grads were being absorbed.
At every company I’ve worked at, there never seemed to be any trouble getting IT staff. And I increasingly read in the news and hear from CS colleagues about jobs getting outsourced to Indian H1-B’s.
@aintnopartylikea - It is customary to provide a link when you want to discuss statistics you quote.
The above quoted numbers are shown for “Computer and Information Systems” and “Drama and
Theater Arts” recent college graduate unemployment rate at https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/HardTimes2015-Report.pdf (page 33 & 30, respectively) for the years 2010-11. For 2011-12 it shows recent college graduate unemployment at 12.1% for “Computer and Information Systems” and at 7.5% for “Drama and Theater Arts”. The stated source is http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/pums_data/.
A page at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York website (https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market/college-labor-market_compare-majors.html), stating as its source 2013-14 data from the American Community Survey, displays 6.7% and 6.8% recent college graduate unemployment for “Information systems and management” and “Performing arts”, respectively.
This suggests that immediate employability of a major can change dramatically in just three years.
The FRBNY report differentiates
Computer science 3.6% 24.6% $54,000 $86,000 32.2%
from
Information systems and management 6.7% 45.3% $43,000 $70,000 23.2%
Well, it’s far more nuanced than this. It is true that performing arts majors are far more likely to be underemployed than, say, an engineering or a computer science major. But it is not true that “many” are employed at Starbucks - or rather, it depends on what you mean by “many”.
Low-skilled retail work (including baristas) actually make up the smallest share of underemployment. [A 2015 research study](https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr749.pdf?la=en) about occupations and underemployment of recent grads post-2008 found that only 9% of undermployed workers were working in low-skilled serviced jobs like retail and food service. Fully half of “underemployed” recent college graduates were really working in relatively high-paying jobs ($40,000+) that simply didn’t require a bachelor’s degree - like paralegals, human resource workers, computer support specialists, web developers, computer network architects, detectives and police officers, insurance agents, and real estate brokers. (Also, and this goes without saying, but the vast majority of performing arts majors are not working low-skilled service jobs.)
Besides, I’d rather be working as a barista at Starbucks - with benefits and health insurance - than not working at all.
Anyway, it’s totally true. That data is taken from the American Community Survey, which is a representative subset of the U.S. population. The “Hard Times” report is one of my favorites, because it brings some nuance to the major generalizations people make about college degrees and which degrees are “worthless” vs. easy to get jobs in. Number one - many recent graduates struggle to find good jobs after college, especially in the wake of the recession.
Number two, many majors are closer together than most would think, and the holy grail of STEM isn’t a protective mechanism in all cases. (Some science degrees - mainly engineering - are more protective than others.) For recent college graduates, computer science has about the same unemployment rate as journalism (7.4% and 7% respectively) and is only a half percentage point lower than sociology (8%); elementary education is slightly lower than mathematics (5.1% vs. 6%); civil engineering and family consumer sciences are about the same (around 7.1%), and economics majors’ unemployment rate is the same or actually slightly higher than that of psychology, history, English, and foreign language majors. You can also see the fluctuations over years; although for the most recent year mechanical engineering unemployment rates dropped in the 5% range, in the prior two years it was in the 8% range.
In fact, the majors with the consistently lowest unemployment rates are actually nursing, elementary education, and chemistry, but those are rarely the majors people encourage college students to pick.
But the best thing, IMO, is how the report shows how unemployment basically washes out within a few years of graduation. Experienced college grads are those with 5 or more years of experience, and you can see that the range of unemployment in that group is around 3-6% for pretty much every major.