The New York Fed Tracked Graduates For Five Years. These Majors Left The Most People Unemployed.
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Recent anthropology graduates had the highest unemployment rate of any college major tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 2024, at 7.9 percent, according to the bank's Labor Market for Recent College Graduates feature, updated in February 2026. That is nearly double the 4.2 percent unemployment rate for all adult workers that year, and it sits inside a broader pattern the data have tracked since 1990: unemployment among recent graduates, defined as 22-to-27-year-olds with at least a bachelor's degree, reached 5.6 percent by the second quarter of 2026, above the overall adult rate for the first extended stretch in the feature's history.
The bigger surprise sits just below anthropology on the list. Computer engineering graduates had the second-highest unemployment rate, at 7.8 percent, and computer science graduates tied for fifth, at 7.0 percent, alongside fine arts and performing arts. Two majors long treated as safe, practical choices posted worse employment outcomes than several humanities and arts degrees typically criticized for weak job prospects.
Unemployment And Underemployment Measure Different Things
The New York Fed tracks two separate statistics for each of the 73 majors in its analysis, drawn from U.S. Census Bureau data. Unemployment measures graduates actively looking for work who haven't found any. Underemployment measures something different: graduates who are working, but in jobs that typically don't require a college degree, based on the Department of Labor's O*NET occupational classifications. A major can score badly on one measure and well on the other, and that is exactly what happened with computer science and computer engineering. Despite their elevated unemployment rates, both majors posted underemployment rates below 20 percent, far under the 42 percent rate across all majors that the New York Fed recorded for the second quarter of 2026.
Criminal Justice And Performing Arts Lead A Different List
By underemployment, the ranking looks nothing like the unemployment ranking. Criminal justice graduates had the highest underemployment rate in 2024, at 65.8 percent, followed by performing arts at 63.9 percent, fine arts at 58.9 percent, leisure and hospitality at 58.1 percent, and agriculture at 57.1 percent. Anthropology, liberal arts, foreign language, animal and plant sciences, and communications rounded out the top ten, each above 53 percent. Glassdoor chief economist Daniel Zhao told Business Insider that computer science graduates appear to be sitting out a slower technology hiring market rather than taking lower-skilled jobs, because the pay premium in tech still makes waiting worthwhile.
The Pay Gap Tells A Third Story
Early-career wages complicate the picture further. Computer engineering graduates had the highest median early-career salary among all majors tracked, at $90,000, with computer science close behind at $87,000. Pharmacy majors, despite a professional degree requirement, had the lowest early-career median wage at $40,000, with theology and religion majors close behind at $41,600. A graduate weighing computer science against a lower-unemployment major such as nutrition sciences, which posted one of the lowest jobless rates in the 2024 data, is really weighing a smaller chance of finding any job quickly against a much larger paycheck once they do.
What The Numbers Suggest For Current Students
Anthropology's unemployment rate has risen from 6.5 percent in 2021 to 7.9 percent in the 2024 data, a reminder that a major's ranking is not fixed from year to year; computer engineering told a similar story in reverse, sitting among the lowest-unemployment majors at 3.2 percent in 2021 before climbing into second place by 2024. Neither the unemployment list nor the underemployment list, taken alone, describes whether a major is a good choice. A student choosing between two majors gets a more complete picture by checking both figures, plus early-career pay, for their specific field on the New York Fed's own interactive tool, than by relying on a single reported statistic or a general reputation the major earned years earlier.
