Job prospects for college graduates vary widely by major, but the highest unemployment rates aren’t always in the fields you’d expect.
A new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows how recent graduates across 73 college majors fared in 2024.
Recent anthropology grads had the highest unemployment at 7.9% — nearly double the overall rate (4.2%) across all majors. Fine arts (7.7%) and performing arts (7.0%) also ranked near the top.
More surprising were computer engineering (7.5%) and computer science (7.0%), majors long considered safe bets.
The findings complicate the once-popular advice of “learn to code,” which became shorthand for job security in the 2010s. Separate data shows that the share of software development job postings on Indeed has dramatically declined since the hiring boom of 2022.
But elevated unemployment doesn’t tell the full story.
