Do we know what kinds of jobs these are, and whether the kids feel fulfilled? And what pay levels are relative to the pay levels in the geography they are in, adjusted for the numbers of years out of college, without the benefit of a post graduate law degree or something?
That doesn’t answer my question. Salaries have not come down for people that get jobs in engg and related fields
The author of the article will have to be the one to answer all those hypothetical questions, so best to contact them. My posts are sharing information about the majors and job prospects, which is the topic of this thread.
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I fully agree with this. These graduates need to have some level of flexibility…maybe they need to relocate, or take an adjacent to their major job, or take a lower entry job that has potential for advancement.
Some students are looking for the job when really that might not be possible right now…but could be in the future with some good experience.
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While the stats can be interesting, the article’s conclusions are obviously flawed. For example, engineering ranked near the bottom in versatility, while English and Drama majors were at the top in versatility. Does that mean as the article states,
“Engineering graduates, who likely thought they’d picked a safe and lucrative major … have more specialized skills that aren’t as versatile or as useful in as many industries.”
Or does that mean engineering majors tend to have lucrative quality employment options within the engineering field, so they don’t tend to apply to less lucrative jobs outside of engineering? More telling are figures like salary, unemployment rate, and underemployment rate. Note that the underemployment rate by major posted earlier is almost the inverse of the “versatility” list, suggesting the “versatile” jobs are primarily lower paying ones that don’t require a college degree.
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Salaries have not come down at the entry level but they are facing compression at every level (besides the executive suite) beyond that. Something to consider, not that there’s anything an individual can do about it, except to focus on “Total Comp” and not entry level base salary.
Raises are smaller at virtually every band, based on studies done by proprietary compensation consultants. Raises are smaller for top performers and may be negligible for everyone else. Benefits are being cut (say goodbye to those fully loaded cards for uber eats lunches on the days you work at home, say goodbye to 24 week parental leave for the non-childbearing parent, say goodbye to IVF treatments being fully covered, even if the company health care plan does not cover it).
Entry level salary is one single datapoint. The reality is much more nuanced. And the first “big line item” expense to go for many companies is that bloated sign-on bonus. Many entry level employees used it to pay down their loans in their second month of employment (if the company policy dictated that it got paid with your first paycheck). If you’re joining a company where you have friends who started two years ago and took off for Thailand and Bali because they knew they could pay off their credit card once they started work- check the fine print before you book your tickets!
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This is not our experience or the experience I know for other young people that have entered the work force in the past 2-5 years
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Fantastic! I always like to hear about successful young people launching their careers.
And what is the experience for those starting jobs in September 2026?
If you manage to get a job, then signon doesn’t need to be bad. I can pm you with an example.
Rutgers CS if it is of interest to anyone. As of now:
I think it is a bifurcated market. I would think that many of the grad school choices are those that were not happy with the job outcome.
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Can we really draw accurate conclusions or thoughtful insights when we only have data for 74 of 800+ 2026 CS students?
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That is a valid concern, but this is what we have. And I suspect some of the non responses are because people are not enthusiastic about responding - ie they don’t have the outcomes they want.
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Maybe it’s time to pull the thread back up About the limitations of outcome reports. A knowledge rate of around 9.25% unfortunately does not provide helpful data. Problems and limitations with College career outcome reports: reading between the lines
and even in that 9.25% response, almost a third were still looking for work prior to graduation.
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Post grad outcome surveys are typically done 6 months after graduation. This survey was instead done prior to graduation. Being prior to graduation, I don’t find it surprising that a significant minority of students did not have jobs lined up yet. The same thing happened in all previous years of the survey. An example comparison to 2025 is below.
2026 survey – 44% employed, 26% grad school, 29% seeking (9% response rate)
2025 survey – 43% employed, 17% grad school, 38% seeking (10% response rate)
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It is more disturbing then that some 30-40% of the kids are looking 6 months after, even in better years. Also more people going to grad school this year suggests more job market stress.
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If you mean the stats in my post above, both surveys were done prior to graduation. Post grad outcomes surveys done 6 month after graduation show much smaller portion of students looking for work. Example stats from the most recent available year of NACE survey, which is done 6 months after graduation and includes 600k students across hundreds of colleges, with varying degrees of selectivity (vast majority of responding students attended less selective colleges).
Most Recent Available
Computer Science – Ave Salary = $110k, 64% employed, 17% education, 16% seeking
Mech Eng – Ave Salary = $80k, 69% employed, 15% education, 13.5% seeking
Economics – Ave Salary = $80k, 68% employed, 18% education, 12% seeking
All Majors – Ave Salary = $70k, 60% employed, 23% education, 14% seeking
History – Ave Salary = $55k, 44.5% employed, 31.5% education, 18.5% seeking
Psychology – Ave Salary = $50k, 45% employed, 34% education, 17% seeking
English – Ave Salary = $50k, 52% employed, 24% education, 20% seeking
Pre-COVID: Inflation Adjusted
Computer Science – Ave Salary = $110k, 78% employed, 11% education, 10% seeking
Mech Eng – Ave Salary = $87k, 71% employed, 14% education, 12% seeking
Economics – Ave Salary = $77k, 67% employed, 16% education, 15% seeking
All Majors – Ave Salary = $70k, 65% employed, 19% education, 14% seeking
History – Ave Salary = $55k, 48% employed, 28% education, 17% seeking
Psychology – Ave Salary = $50k, 48% employed, 31% education, 18% seeking
English – Ave Salary = $50k, 55% employed, 21% education, 20% seeking
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Berkeley first destinations survey is still open and early data can be notoriously misleading.
FWIW, across all majors 35% are still looking as of today.
Top 3 employers (as of 06/28)
- Amazon: 99
- Google: 49
- Meta: 26
From the class of 2025, the final reported count across those same employers:
- Amazon: 158
- Google: 43
- Meta: 42
Many of S22’s friends haven’t updated their survey with the actual employment results. There is a class gift typically associated with survey completion and you will get a bunch of “Still Looking” people complete the survey even if they dont have an offer or don’t plan to take up the offer at hand.
A fair number of S22’s friends have reneged on Amazon because all of them uniformly don’t look at Amazon or Meta for that matter as a stable starting point for their careers.
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Or perhaps certain majors have very limited job markets in jobs related to the majors (e.g. visual and performing arts, which can be elite or bust for those trying to make careers out of them), so the students and graduates know that they have seek work in varied other types of jobs.
Amazon and Meta have lost some trust because of recent frequent layoffs.
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