How useful is an Economics major? How does it fare in comparison to other majors (business in particular)?
It can be quite useful, although that depends on what you want to do. Useful if you want to go into economic analysis or business. Not so useful if you want to be an architect or a Spanish-language translator.
In terms of post-college outcomes, recent graduates (< 5 years of experience) with majors in economics have a 9.4% unemployment rate and a median salary of $48,000; that goes to 5.7% unemployment and a $76,000 median salary after 5+ years of experience. Business management and administration majors with less than 5 years of experience have an unemployment rate of 8.1% and a median salary of $36,000; that goes to 5.4% and $60,000 after 5+ years of experience. Really, I think the grand separator is the quantitative skills: economics majors have much more quantitative training than your average business major, and the quantitative modeling is in high demand these days. That’s supported by the fact that salary and unemployment trends in finance (and math) are more similar to economics.
(Source: https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/og6p8y9x1yeacejk1ci0)
But really, your income and employment chances are really more predicated upon the skills you develop and the classes you take. A business major with two summers’ worth of internships at top places and high quantitative achievement, maybe some programming skills, might be more employable than an economics major with little to no work experience and mediocre quantitative skills.