Unemployment among Humanities Bachelor’s Degree Holders, by Highest Degree and Age, 2013 and 2015
Relative unemployment rates can also play an imporÂtant part in the overall financial picture for humanities graduates. Like graduates from every other field, holders of bachelor’s degrees in the humanities experienced a sharp increase in unemployment during the Great Recession. Using data for the 2009–2010 time period, Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce put the unemployment rate for college graduates with degrees in the humanities at 9.4%. The unemployment rate has fallen sharply from that point, with unemployment now at or below 4% among those in their prime working years (ages 24 to 55). Among humanities graduates with only a bachelor’s degree, the unemployment rate fell a full percentage point from 2013 to 2015.1
Endnotes
- 1Anthony P. Carnevale, Ban Cheah, and Jeff Strohl, Hard Times: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education and the Workforce, 2012). Data for figure from U.S. Census Bureau, 2015 American Community Survey Public-Use Microdata Sample.