Some 43 Percent of College Grads Are Underemployed in First Job

A study from Burning Glass Technologies found college graduates who studied homeland security and law enforcement had a 65 percent likelihood of being underemployed in their first job out of school, reports the Wall Street Journal . Graduates with degrees in psychology and biology had chances of 54 percent and 51 percent, respectively, of working jobs that require no college degrees. Burning Glass examined real-time job postings and more than four million resumes from people who graduated college between 2000 and 2017, and an average of 43 percent of graduates are underemployed in their first job. About 66 percent of those are still in jobs that do not require college degrees five years later. "When we are producing graduates who wind up in jobs that don't require college degrees, that's a failure to launch for the student and a failure to deliver for the program," said Burning Glass CEO Matt Sigelman. Somewhat surprising, graduates of liberal arts fields such as philosophy, ethnic and gender studies, history, and English all have a better-than-even chance of getting jobs that are aligned with their educational attainment. Research from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce adds credibility to the Burning Glass study, with the finding that job prospects and earnings vary widely by college major.