2027 Cyber Security Degree Underemployment Report: Which Graduates Are Most Likely to Work Below Their Education Level
Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist
Many cyber security graduates are entering a labor market with strong long-term demand but tougher entry-level screening. A 2024 Strada Institute and Burning Glass Institute report found that 52% of recent bachelor's graduates were underemployed one year after graduation, showing why degree-to-job fit matters.
This guide is for cyber security students, recent graduates, career changers, and parents evaluating ROI. You will learn who is most likely to work below their education level, why it happens, and how to build the experience, credentials, and job-search strategy needed for degree-level cyber roles.
Key Things to Know About Underemployment in Cyber Security Industry
- Cyber security underemployment is usually not caused by weak demand alone; it is most common when graduates have a degree but lack hands-on evidence in areas such as SIEM tools, networking, cloud security, scripting, incident response, or governance, risk, and compliance.
- The risk is highest for graduates who finish without internships, labs, certifications, portfolio projects, or a clear target role; the 2024 Strada/Burning Glass finding that 52% of recent bachelor's graduates are underemployed after one year is the broad benchmark cyber graduates should work to avoid.
- The financial trade-off is large; BLS May 2024 data lists information security analysts at a median annual wage of $124,910, while computer support specialists sit much lower, making a prolonged stay in low-credential support work costly if it does not lead to analyst-level responsibilities.
- How likely is it for Cyber Security graduates to become underemployed?
- Is the college curricula for Cyber Security keeping up with employer expectations?
How likely is it for Cyber Security graduates to become underemployed?
Cyber security graduates can become underemployed, but their risk depends heavily on whether they leave school with job-ready technical proof. Underemployment means working in a role that does not typically require the level of education a person has completed.
In cyber security, this often means a bachelor's graduate working in general customer support, retail technology sales, basic device troubleshooting, or administrative IT work with little exposure to security operations.
There is no single federal underemployment rate for "cyber security graduates" because cyber security is classified across computer science, information technology, information assurance, network administration, and related programs. The best way to interpret the risk is to combine broad graduate underemployment data with cyber labor-market signals.
CyberSeek's 2024 dashboard continued to show hundreds of thousands of U.S. cyber-related job openings, but many postings still ask for experience, tools, or certifications that new graduates may not have.
The table below summarizes the practical risk profile. It is designed to help students judge whether they are preparing for degree-level security work or drifting toward a low-credential first job:
| Graduate profile | Typical underemployment risk | Why it matters |
| Degree plus internship, SOC lab, cloud project, and relevant certification | Lower | The graduate can show evidence of applied security work, not just coursework. |
| Degree plus general IT coursework but no security internship | Moderate | The graduate may be screened into help desk or support roles before analyst roles. |
| Degree from a weakly aligned program with no labs, portfolio, or networking foundation | Higher | Employers may see the applicant as academically trained but not operationally ready. |
| Career changer with a cyber degree but no technical employment history | Moderate to higher | The degree helps, but hiring managers often look for proof of transferable technical judgment. |
The safest interpretation is this: a cyber security degree can be worth pursuing, but it is not a substitute for experience. Students who treat the degree as the foundation and add practical proof before graduation are much better positioned to avoid low-credential work.
Is the college curricula for Cyber Security keeping up with employer expectations?
Cyber security curricula are improving, but they do not always keep pace with employer expectations. Many programs still emphasize theory, policy, and survey-level security concepts, while entry-level postings increasingly expect candidates to understand real tools, live environments, cloud identity systems, endpoint detection, vulnerability management, ticket workflows, and incident documentation.
This mismatch matters because cyber security is a practice-heavy field. A student may pass exams on cryptography, risk management, and network defense yet still struggle in interviews if they cannot explain how they triaged an alert, hardened a misconfigured cloud resource, wrote a detection rule, or documented an incident timeline.
The table below shows where the curriculum-to-employer gap often appears. Use it as a checklist when evaluating a program, choosing electives, or deciding what to learn outside class:
| Curriculum area | What many programs cover | What employers often expect from job-ready applicants |
| Security fundamentals | Threat types, CIA triad, basic controls | Ability to map threats to controls, logs, alerts, and response actions |
| Networking | TCP/IP, routing, firewalls, common protocols | Packet analysis, segmentation logic, DNS investigation, VPN and firewall troubleshooting |
| Security operations | Conceptual incident response frameworks | SIEM searches, alert triage, escalation notes, and false-positive analysis |
| Cloud security | Introductory cloud concepts | IAM, storage permissions, logging, key management, and misconfiguration detection |
| Governance and risk | Compliance terms and frameworks | Control testing, audit evidence, risk registers, vendor reviews, and policy documentation |
A strong cyber security program should include labs, capstones, industry tools, employer partnerships, and internship support. If it does not, students need to close the gap independently through home labs, competitions, open-source projects, campus security work, or part-time IT roles with security exposure.
Compared with many broad majors, cyber security can offer better protection against long-term underemployment because it leads to defined technical roles. However, it is not automatically safer than every major.
The advantage appears when the graduate can connect the degree to specific job functions such as security analyst, vulnerability analyst, cloud security associate, identity and access management analyst, compliance analyst, or network security technician.
The most important comparison is not "cyber security versus all majors" in the abstract. It is "cyber security with practical experience versus cyber security as classroom-only credential."
The 2024 Strada/Burning Glass benchmark that 52% of recent bachelor's graduates are underemployed after one year shows the general risk facing new degree holders. Cyber security students can reduce that risk, but mainly by proving work readiness.
The table below compares cyber security with other common education-to-career patterns. It is not a ranking of personal value; it is a decision-support view of how tightly a degree usually maps to degree-level jobs:
| Field or degree pattern | Underemployment protection | Main reason |
| Cyber security with labs, internship, and certifications | Stronger | Employers can evaluate concrete technical readiness. |
| Cyber security without applied experience | Mixed | The degree is relevant, but the applicant may look similar to general IT candidates. |
| Broad liberal arts or general studies pathway | More variable | Career outcomes often depend on internships, networking, and transferable skill packaging. |
| Licensure-oriented graduate pathways | Role-dependent | Some fields have clearer credential-to-job pipelines but also state-specific requirements. |
Students comparing very different career paths should evaluate whether each program leads to a recognizable occupation, supervised experience, and employer-valued credentials. For example, someone exploring people-centered licensed fields through MFT masters programs should compare clinical placement requirements with the internship and lab expectations common in cyber security.
Taking a low-credential role can slow career growth when it disconnects a graduate from the work that cyber employers value. The first job after graduation often shapes how recruiters label a candidate. If the resume says only "customer support," the applicant may need to work harder to prove security readiness than a peer whose first role involved alerts, tickets, networks, cloud systems, audits, or endpoint tools.
The effect is not permanent, but it becomes harder to reverse when the graduate stops learning. AI-enabled support tools and automated triage systems are also changing junior work: routine ticket classification, password support, and simple alert enrichment are increasingly assisted by automation. That makes it even more important for early-career cyber professionals to build judgment, investigation skills, documentation quality, and tool fluency that cannot be reduced to repetitive tasks.
The following choices can keep a low-credential role from becoming a long-term ceiling:
- Rewrite the job internally by volunteering for security-adjacent tasks such as access reviews, phishing reports, endpoint remediation, or audit evidence collection.
- Track measurable outcomes, including tickets resolved, vulnerabilities remediated, systems hardened, scripts written, or alerts investigated.
- Ask for shadowing time with SOC, infrastructure, cloud, IAM, or compliance teams and document what you learn.
- Apply before you feel fully ready, because waiting for perfect qualifications can extend underemployment unnecessarily.
More education is not always the fastest fix. A master's degree can help for specialized, management, or research paths, but entry-level underemployment is often solved faster with experience, certifications, and targeted projects. If you are comparing long-term academic options, even resources about the easiest PhD to get should be weighed against whether additional credentials will actually move you into the cyber role you want.
The salary gap between degree-level cyber security roles and low-credential fallback jobs can be substantial. BLS May 2024 data reports a median annual wage of $124,910 for information security analysts. By contrast, computer support specialist work is much lower on the pay scale, which means a graduate who remains in support work may face a slower return on the cost of the degree.
The table below uses BLS 2024 wage categories as a practical comparison. The categories are not perfect proxies for every graduate's job, but they show the economic difference between security-utilizing roles and common fallback roles:
| Role category | How it relates to a cyber security degree | Median annual wage from BLS May 2024 |
| Information security analyst | Direct degree-level alignment for many cyber graduates | $124,910 |
| Network and computer systems administrator | Often a strong gateway to security engineering, IAM, or infrastructure security | $96,800 |
| Computer support specialist | Common fallback or bridge role; value depends on security exposure | $61,550 |
This gap affects more than take-home pay. Graduates repaying student loans may have less flexibility to move, pay for certifications, or wait for better-fit roles if they remain in lower-paying work. Income-driven repayment options can reduce monthly federal loan payments for eligible borrowers, but they do not replace the career value of moving into degree-level work as early as possible.
The decision is not always "reject support jobs." A support role can be financially reasonable if it offers a clear security path. It becomes risky when the salary is low, the responsibilities are not security-related, and the employer cannot explain how the role leads to analyst-level work.
The most common barriers are not simply "too few jobs." They are mismatches between what graduates can prove and what employers need done on day one. Cyber security teams are responsible for protecting real systems, so hiring managers often prefer candidates who have practiced in realistic environments.
The table below identifies the barriers that most often push cyber security graduates into low-credential work. Use it to diagnose which issue is most likely affecting your job search:
| Barrier | How it causes underemployment | What it looks like in applications |
| No internship or co-op | Employers see no evidence of workplace security judgment | Many interviews but few offers for analyst roles |
| Weak networking foundation | Security tools are hard to use without understanding systems and traffic | Struggles with technical screens on ports, protocols, DNS, or logs |
| No tool exposure | Coursework sounds theoretical rather than operational | Resume lists concepts but not SIEM, EDR, cloud, scanning, or ticketing tools |
| Unclear target role | Applications are too broad and unfocused | Same resume sent to SOC, GRC, cloud, forensics, and help desk jobs |
| Local market mismatch | Some regions have fewer junior cyber openings or require clearance, onsite work, or industry experience | Long job search despite relevant education |
Soft skills also matter. Security work requires clear writing, escalation judgment, and the ability to explain risk to nontechnical stakeholders. Students drawn to policy, awareness, vendor risk, or security communications may benefit from strengthening writing and stakeholder skills; those considering broader communication-focused graduate study can compare options such as a masters in communications while still building cyber-specific evidence.
A cyber security resume should make the employer's decision easy: it should show the target role, the relevant tools, the technical environment, and the proof that the applicant can perform entry-level security work. Many underemployed graduates have resumes that read like course catalogs instead of evidence files.
Before applying, choose one primary job family. A SOC analyst resume should not look identical to a GRC analyst resume, and a cloud security resume should not look identical to a help desk resume. Tailoring matters because applicant tracking systems and recruiters scan for role-specific terms.
Use the following sequence to position your resume for degree-level cyber roles:
- Put a role-specific headline near the top, such as "Entry-Level SOC Analyst," "Cybersecurity GRC Analyst," "IAM Analyst," or "Cloud Security Associate."
- Replace generic coursework bullets with applied evidence, such as "Investigated simulated brute-force activity in Splunk and documented escalation notes."
- Group tools by category, including SIEM, EDR, vulnerability scanners, cloud platforms, ticketing systems, scripting languages, and operating systems.
- Translate academic projects into employer language by naming the environment, threat, tool, action, and result.
- Add security-adjacent work experience even if the job title was not security-focused, especially access management, patching, audit support, or incident documentation.
- Match the resume to each posting by using the employer's language for frameworks, tools, and responsibilities without exaggerating experience.
Common mistakes include listing every class ever taken, claiming advanced penetration testing skills after only a short lab, applying only to remote jobs, and ignoring alumni referrals. A better approach is to build three resume versions: one for SOC and incident response, one for GRC and risk, and one for infrastructure or cloud security.
Certifications can help cyber security graduates qualify for degree-level roles, especially when the degree program was theoretical or the student lacks internship experience. They should not be treated as magic tickets, but they can reduce employer uncertainty by validating baseline knowledge in networking, security operations, cloud, or governance.
The table below summarizes certifications that commonly support entry-level or early-career cyber security applications. The best choice depends on the role you want, not on collecting the longest list of acronyms:
| Certification | Best fit | How it helps reduce underemployment risk |
| CompTIA Security+ | Entry-level SOC, government contractor, general cyber roles | Signals baseline security knowledge and is widely recognized in junior postings |
| CompTIA Network+ | Students with weak networking backgrounds | Strengthens the foundation needed for logs, firewalls, traffic analysis, and troubleshooting |
| CompTIA CySA+ | SOC analyst and threat detection tracks | Shows applied interest in analysis, detection, and vulnerability management |
| ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity | New entrants and career changers | Provides an accessible baseline credential for candidates building early proof |
| SSCP | Security administration and operations | Fits candidates moving from IT support or systems roles into security operations |
| AWS Certified Security Specialty or Azure security credentials | Cloud security roles | Helps demonstrate cloud-specific security knowledge when paired with projects |
| GIAC or SANS-aligned credentials | Specialized technical roles | Can be valuable but may be costly, so ROI should be evaluated carefully |
For many graduates, the fastest ROI path is one foundation certification plus one role-specific project portfolio. A student targeting GRC may benefit more from audit and risk documentation samples than from another technical certification, while a SOC candidate should prioritize logs, detections, alert writeups, and incident timelines.
Students can reduce underemployment risk well before graduation. The goal is to leave school with a degree, a target role, a portfolio, employer references, and enough practical experience to compete for degree-level openings.
The following steps create a stronger path from school to cyber security employment:
- Pick a target role by sophomore or junior year, such as SOC analyst, GRC analyst, IAM analyst, cloud security associate, vulnerability analyst, or network security technician.
- Audit job descriptions every semester and compare required tools, certifications, and responsibilities against your courses.
- Complete at least one internship, co-op, campus IT job, managed security project, or volunteer role with real technical accountability.
- Build a portfolio with three to five role-specific artifacts, such as SIEM investigations, vulnerability reports, cloud IAM reviews, risk registers, phishing analysis, or incident reports.
- Earn one certification that matches your target role instead of collecting unrelated credentials.
- Practice technical interviews with logs, network diagrams, scenario questions, and written incident summaries.
- Apply early and broadly, including regional employers, hospitals, banks, manufacturers, state agencies, school systems, consulting firms, and managed security service providers.
- Evaluate first jobs by asking whether the role builds security-relevant experience, not just whether the employer has "cyber" in its department name.
Program choice also matters. Students should compare accreditation, lab access, internship support, career placement transparency, transfer credit policies, faculty industry experience, and tool exposure.
The same ROI mindset applies across fields; whether someone is evaluating cyber security or an online degree in photography, the key question is whether the program produces portfolio evidence and a credible path to paid work.
The best strategy is not to wait until after graduation. By the final semester, a competitive cyber security student should already have a target job title, a tailored resume, a portfolio link, a certification plan, a referral list, and a weekly application routine.
Some cyber security graduates use a low-credential job as a temporary bridge into better roles, but staying too long can become a problem. The key issue is whether the first job builds security-relevant evidence. A help desk position that includes identity access tickets, phishing triage, endpoint investigation, patching, or escalation to a SOC can be useful. A generic support role with no security exposure may not move the graduate closer to degree-level work.
The 2024 Strada/Burning Glass report found that graduates who start underemployed face a much higher chance of remaining underemployed years later. That finding matters for cyber security because employers often evaluate recent experience more heavily than coursework after the first year or two out of school.
Graduates who accept a low-credential role should treat it as a timed transition, not a destination. The following signals help separate a useful gateway job from a career trap:
- A useful gateway role gives access to security tickets, privileged access processes, log review, vulnerability remediation, endpoint tooling, or compliance documentation.
- A risky fallback role keeps the graduate in repetitive password resets, call scripts, retail support, or general troubleshooting without measurable technical growth.
- A useful gateway role has a realistic internal path to SOC analyst, systems administrator, network administrator, IAM analyst, or security compliance work.
- A risky fallback role has no mentor, no training budget, no security exposure, and no clear promotion criteria.
A practical rule is to set a six- to twelve-month exit plan if the role is not adding security-relevant responsibilities. During that period, the graduate should build a portfolio, earn one targeted certification, and apply to roles that sit one step closer to security operations or GRC.
Other Things You Should Know About Cyber Security
Yes, but only if it builds security-relevant experience. A help desk role is more useful when it includes identity access work, endpoint troubleshooting, phishing tickets, patching, escalation notes, or collaboration with security teams. If it is limited to repetitive password resets and scripted support, set a short exit plan.
Holding out can make sense if the graduate has savings, strong projects, certifications, and active interviews. If not, a security-adjacent IT role may be better than unemployment, provided it offers a clear path toward analyst-level work.
Not automatically. Format matters less than program quality, labs, employer connections, internship access, and portfolio outcomes. An online student who completes strong projects and gains experience can be more competitive than a campus student with only classroom exposure.
The biggest warning sign is spending months or years in a role that does not add security tools, systems knowledge, documentation practice, or measurable technical responsibility. If the job is not building evidence for the next role, the graduate should upskill and apply elsewhere.
See What Experts Have To Say About Studying Cyber Security
Read our interview with Cyber Security experts
Shambhu Upadhyaya
Cyber Security Expert
Director, SEAS/SOM Cybersecurity MS Program
University at Buffalo
Muath Obaidat
Cyber Security Expert
Associate Professor
City University of New York
- Cybersecurity Jobs Report: 3.5 Million Unfilled Positions In 2025 https://cybersecurityventures.com/jobs-report-2021/
- Cybersecurity Career Without a Degree: How To (2026) https://unihackers.com/blog/cybersecurity-career-without-degree
- Cybersecurity Graduate Unemployment & Skills Mismatch Statistics (2026) - Programs.com https://programs.com/resources/cybersecurity-graduate-unemployment/
- The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market
- Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2024 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cyber-security-skills-in-the-uk-labour-market-2024/cyber-security-skills-in-the-uk-labour-market-2024
- Articles | University of Phoenix https://www.phoenix.edu/articles.html
- Cybersecurity Supply And Demand Heat Map https://www.cyberseek.org/heatmap.html
