A new salary survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)has some good news for the graduates of the class of 2013. Though many grads are still struggling to find work—an analysis commissioned by the Associated Press in April showed that more than half (53.6%) of new grads were jobless or underemployed—those who are working in their chosen fields are enjoying a 2.4% uptick in salaries from the previous year. Graduates in some majors like petroleum engineering are making close to six figures in their first jobs. According to NACE, that’s the top-paying bachelor’s degree with a salary of $96,200. The next two highest-paying majors are also engineering degrees: computer engineering at $70,300 and chemical engineering at $66,900.
NACE released two tables this week showing earnings for 2013 graduates. A Bethlehem, PA non-profit, NACE links college placement offices with employers. Its employer members tend to be large companies, but for its salary surveys it goes beyond its members and combs through data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and a master set of data developed by a compensation measurement company called Job Search Intelligence. The data are reported by employers and they represent accepted salaries rather than offers. The latest data come from July 2013.
First, here is a table of the average starting salaries for the top-paying majors for the class of 2013. If a liberal arts college like Oberlin or Wesleyan, doesn’t have a major with the specific title, NACE uses a government measure called the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP), says NACE’s employment information manager Andrea Koncz. Note that all of the majors are varying engineering degrees, aside from three: Computer Science, Management Information/Business, and Logistics/Materials Management.
Top-Paid Majors for Class of 2013 Bachelor’s Degree Graduates
NACE also released a more general table showing average salaries by discipline, and how those salaries have fared in the last year. Not surprisingly, given the high engineering salaries in the table above, engineering graduates are the best earners, at $62,100. That’s up 2.3% from the previous year. Business majors saw the greatest increase, 7.9%, to an average of $55,600.
Average Salaries By Discipline
One confusing fact when you look at the two tables: in the second chart, computer science salaries fell 2.5%, to $58,500, even though, in the first chart, grads with that degree are earning an average of $64,100. Koncz explains that in the more general table, NACE looked at all kinds of computer science degrees, including so-called “information sciences and systems.” Grads with those degrees aren’t doing as well as those who received diplomas in pure computer science B.A. programs.
Per usual, humanities and social science majors are faring the worst, with an average starting salary of $37,800. At least that’s up 2.6% from 2012. It’s interesting to note the breakdown within the humanities. The biggest salary increases came for those who studied sociology, who are enjoying a 10.8% jump from 2012 to $37,000 and for criminal justice majors, who gained 8.1% to $34,800. The smallest increase went to social work majors, who had only 2.3% growth to $36,000. Students who studied visual and performing arts had a salary drop of 3% to $35,600 in 2013.
NACE includes two other interesting charts in its report. The top-paying industries and the businesses that are doing the most hiring. The industry that pays the most, by far, is “mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction,” at an average starting salary of $85,700. The next in line is “management of companies and enterprises,” at $57,500.
One note of hope for humanities grads: The industry that is hiring the most is “educational services,” which hired 452,700 new grads in 2013. The next top-hiring category is “professional, scientific and technical services,” which hired 305,500.
I admit I am preoccupied with humanities majors because that’s the field where I got my degree, at Brown, in an inter-disciplinary “concentration” as they call it there, in “law and society,” where I studied political science , sociology and philosophy. Also I have a 16-year-old college-bound son who only knows, broadly, that he wants to study humanities. I just hope he won’t be part of the 54% of new grads who wind up working at Starbucks and that he’ll find a position that pays more than the NACE chart suggests.
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