What are the Highest Income Jobs by College major?
Thousands of college students worry about what to major in, and one of their main concerns is wanting to chose a major that will lead to the highest income jobs after graduation. While there are some professions that show lucrative salaries and high demand for starting positions year after year, such as healthcare, accounting, law, engineering, economics and finance, many hot jobs come in cycles. These cyclical trends do influence the job market and salaries as well as the degree to which graduates have to struggle and study and the college majors that they pursue. For example, those who graduated in Internet Technology in recent years were highly sought after and highly paid the Internet was booming and taking off, but now graduates in this field are having to work much harder to get work and earn higher salaries.
When deciding on a college major in terms of job outlook, it is a good idea to see where there might be gaps in personnel at the time of your graduation. For example, baby boomers are driving big hiring demands throughout the healthcare industry, which will be needing staff as doctors, medical researchers, home health aides and registered nurses. It will not be uncommon to find high salaries and huge signing bonuses in healthcare professions because of the shortage. Fields where there will be huge personnel shortages to make up for provide college grads with the opportunity to fill in and get a good job easily.
Just as there are fields that consistently have higher salaries, there are also college majors that have never been known to lead to high-income opportunities, such as liberal arts and humanities majors, and those who study to be teachers. First-year teachers earn salaries far below many starting salaries in other fields. Still, while jobs will fall in and out of favor, experts say students should not pick a college major base on what’s hot today. Instead you should focus on what you are good at and what you enjoy. If you are concerned about earning a high salary, then it is best to consider getting a second degree as employees with higher degrees generally earn higher incomes.