A recent analysis of college majors reveals significant disparities in earnings among graduates, particularly when comparing engineering fields to liberal arts and education disciplines. The new data shines a light on the pay gap between various degrees. It further highlights the trends in early-career and mid-career earnings according to 2023 data.
This is unsurprising when engineering majors regularly rank among the highest if not the highest fields of study in terms salary potential. Graduates in these STEM fields typically land jobs paying more than $80,000 right after they graduate. By mid-career, engineers are often pulling down six-figure salaries, a testament to the value of skills in one of the hottest career fields around. This jarring reality is hard to fathom when looking at other professions, who make significantly less.
Nathanael Farrelly, a nursing entrepreneur—for his terrific financial impact selling his business for a whopping $12.5 million. He retired at the ripe old age of 28! His experience illustrates the thrilling, dynamic opportunities that await those who pursue some technical careers. This is particularly the case in sectors closely associated with health care and technology.
Graduates of the liberal arts and education are starting out in a much more difficult financial environment. Many in these fields make more like $40,000 over the course of their early careers. Wage Rate This figure is well below the U.S. 2023 median wage of $48,060. This further underscores the economic challenges that graduates in these disciplines are encountering.
This included a deep dive into mid-career graduates by field, which very specifically found that the early childhood education major was the lowest earning profession. Their median income is $49,000, an $8,000 increase over their income five years out of school in the early career. At first glance, this growth is indeed impressive, but it’s still far behind other technical disciplines.
In addition to focus group research, this data collection focused on full-time workers between the ages of 22 and 27. It covered all the people aged 35 to 45 years old. The median salary for all other majors studied is $50,000. This disparity does not only paint the picture of the most lucrative majors to pursue, but it sheds light on the variance between high and low earning fields.