Not a current Chicago liberal arts major – I’m a parent of two former Chicago liberal arts majors. Which gives me some perspective . . .
First, start trying to use terms correctly. “Liberal arts” and “humanities” are not the same thing. And political science and international relations, while properly considered liberal arts majors (sort of, in the case of IR), are not usually considered humanities subjects. Chicago has a Humanities Division and a Social Sciences Division, and political science and international relations are housed in the Social Sciences Division. Humanities generally means literature, languages, philosophy, art, theater, religion. History is sort of a borderline between humanities and social sciences; at Chicago, history itself is treated as a social science, but art history and medieval studies are part of the Humanities Division. All of those things, and math, and basic science, are part of the “liberal arts.”
Anyway, second: Some of my kid #1’s friends, who graduated at the height of the Great Recession in 2009 had trouble finding jobs, or took jobs that were not necessarily meaningful jobs, but all of them have real careers now. In a couple of cases, that involved intervening graduate school that they hadn’t “always wanted,” in other cases that involved long-planned grad school, and in most cases people haven’t had to go to grad school unless they wanted to (or their employers paid for it). Of course, a lot of kids found jobs right out of the box, and that was fine, too. There was definitely some stress for many kids, though.
My kid #2’s classmates a few years later had a much easier time. Almost all of them had jobs they wanted lined up before they graduated, and the rest were employed within a few months after graduation. Lots worked for only a year or two, and then went to graduate school, as they had always planned.
Third, remember a few things:
Most University of Chicago students have career aspirations that probably involve grad school at some point. (That’s true of all equivalent colleges. I can only name a handful of my classmates from Yale who never got a graduate degree of one sort or another.) Out in the world, there’s a colloquial term for political science/international relations majors: “pre-law”. (That’s a joke, but a joke with a lot of truth to it.)
Lots of people do stuff right after college that’s fun and educational, but not necessarily career-focused. Like going to Hong Kong, Paris or New York and working crap jobs in order to hang out in Hong Kong, Paris or New York. As long as you can feed and shelter yourself, and make payments on your college debt, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. It’s really common to go to a foreign country and teach English essentially to travel, to broaden your own horizons and to learn the language(s) of the country where you are teaching.
The university itself has scores, maybe hundreds of jobs that are filled by recent graduates, anything from being a research assistant to working in the admissions office to soliciting alumni donations. These aren’t necessarily career jobs, but they can be great first jobs.