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Using the same American Community Survey for 2009 and 2010 as Fogg and Harrington, but focussing on actual unemployment by major, Carnevale, Cheat and Strohl (Hard Times, Georgetown University, Center for Education and the Workforce, 2011) have similar findings (p. 7). Recent college graduates with a business major have a 7.4% unemployment rate, those with an arts degree have an 11.1% rate (with social science majors having an 8.9% rate and humanities/liberal arts students having a 9.4% rate). Combining these two studies, it is clear that being an arts major does not compel one to, at best, discussing supersizing with customers, nor does being a business major totally guard against that. Yes, business majors do better in the job market, and they make more money in their entry level positions than do arts majors ($39,000/yr vs. $$30,000/yr), but is this enough to tell everyone to flock into undergraduate business schools? Engineers and computer scientists have even higher entry salaries (about $50,000/yr) but can student thinking contemplating their major at age 18 (or even age 12) all of a sudden give themselves the skills necessary to do computer science?
In brief, the current job market is bad for everyone, including recent college graduates (and other youth seeking a first job), and the costs of long term unemployment or underemployment are high. But it is not responsible to tell college students that their lives will be terrible unless they study engineering, and that the career prospects or current college graduates are orders of magnitude worse than a decade ago. Neither of those statements are consistent with current data.
[Cross-posted at The Monkey Cage]
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