 Is a statistics major or a statistics degree worth it? That's what we're going to be talking about today, but before we get into that, make sure to gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. On this channel, we talk about personal finance, college degrees, careers, and opportunities that are going to lead you to success. And we also talk about avoiding some of the common financial traps that so many people fall for. If you're new here and that sounds like something that interests you and you haven't done it already, then go ahead, hit the subscribe button and ring the notification bell so that you never miss out. Now, with that out of the way, let's jump right into it. We are going to be reviewing a statistics degree or a statistics major from a personal finance perspective. And simply speaking, statistics is where you use math in order to organize and gather data in such a way where it can be understood and interpreted to make real life decisions. Now, obviously, this is going to involve a lot of mathematics. It's very similar to a mathematics degree in that respect. However, statistics is a very specific type of math. A mathematics degree in general is going to be a little less specific and not as applicable to the real world, whereas a statistics degree is a little more practical, in my opinion. And in this specific type of math, you are going to be using spreadsheets galore. And if you're not somebody who likes crunching numbers for a breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then this is probably not for you. So for some statistics might be mind numbingly dull, whereas for others, they really like using it because of how practical it is. Now, with this degree, there's around 2,100 bachelor's graduates every single year. However, there are a lot of other degrees that have the word statistics in it, or they're related to statistics. So it's probably quite a bit more than that. Now, there are a ton of different examples of careers past that you can go down after graduating with this degree. You could become a market researcher, a financial analyst, you could become an economist, or of course, a statistician. You could also go down the technology side of things and become a software engineer, a database administrator, or a data scientist. But there's four major sections here that I'm going to be evaluating and giving a score from one to 10. We're going to start with salary, then we're going to move on to satisfaction. Then we're going to move on to demand and finally, x factors. At the very end of the video, I'm going to give this one a ranking out of 10. With a statistics degree in general, you're going to expect to make around $63,000 a year in your first five years after graduating, also known as early career pay. And then mid career pay, which is 10 years and on, you could expect to make around $114,000 a year. Now, the pay is going to vary greatly depending on what career path you decide to go down. For instance, if you want to become an actuary, you're probably going to start around $67,000 a year. And then after 10 years, you're going to be making around $105,000. If you want to become a statistician, they make around $92,000 a year. However, you're generally going to have to get a master's level degree if you want to work purely as a statistician or a mathematician. Statistician, God, that's a really weird word to say. Some really common career paths that you would see people going down would becoming a senior statistician, a data scientist, or a senior data scientist, as they move on in their career. So a data scientist, for instance, is going to make around $122,000 a year. But again, you are going to have to have a master's level degree, generally speaking, to get into it. However, there are a ton of different careers out there that you can go into that don't require master's level degrees. These are just two of the examples that I found. So for instance, you could become a software developer and they make around $107,000 a year. And that's with just a bachelor's level degree. There really are a ton of different career paths that you could go down with a statistics degree. And almost all of them tend to be really well paying. So overall, for a statistics degree, I'm going to give this one a salary score of nine out of 10. So next, we're going to be talking about satisfaction. Now, to be honest with you, this is the most subjective section. For some people, crunching numbers all day could be their dream. They'd absolutely love to do that. And for other people, that would be a nightmare. I kind of like some types of math. I'm sorry if that's weird to a lot of you. I know a lot of people hate math, but statistics is not under that category. All the classes that I took in statistics to me were extremely boring. However, I see how incredibly useful it is. And you know, the end product after you've done all the boring stuff can be extremely useful and fun. And there are a ton of people out there that love statistics and they love what they can do using their knowledge. So with that being said, according to pay scale, the meaning score, which is basically how much you think your career or your degree impacts the world in a positive way is on the lower side. It's not super low, but it is on the lower side. For statistics, it is a 42% meaning score. And for some of the other statistics related degrees, it's also relatively low. But with that being said, a lot of the mathematics related majors are on the lower side. And I think that's just because a lot of people don't like math that much in general. However, when you look at job satisfaction, which is a little bit different than meaning job satisfaction is basically how much you enjoy doing your job. It is actually a little bit on the higher side. So for instance, for statisticians, they have a job satisfaction score around 72%. And that basically just means that 72% of the people surveyed said that they are highly satisfied with their job. So although the meaning might be a little bit low, you might not be positively impacting the world all that much. You do tend to go into careers where you are satisfied with the career itself. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that a statistics degree is going to teach you skills that are really highly coveted. And a lot of people out there, a lot of businesses are going to want to hire you. And so therefore, they're going to have to treat you a lot better just because of the fact that you have a lot of options. But overall, like I said, this is extremely subjective. This is always the hardest one for me to rate. I'm going to go ahead and give this one a 7.5 out of 10. For some people, this one would be a 10 out of 10. And for other people, this one would be a one out of 10. Next, we're going to be talking about demand and overall demand might actually be the most important one on the entire list, just because of the fact that a lot of the other ones on this list tend to stem from demand. So for instance, if a skill set is high in demand, the salary is going to tend to go up. They're also going to want to treat you really well, give you really good benefits, etc. Just because of the fact that they want to keep you. And there's a lot of competition for people who have your skill set. So that means that the satisfaction will likely go up as well. Now, BLS projects a 27% growth in careers that are related to a statistics degree within the next 10 years. That is really, really good, especially when you consider the fact that the average career is growing at about 4%. Now, I think one of the biggest reasons for this incredible growth is the fact that more and more businesses and government agencies, etc. are realizing the importance of data. Okay, data is more valuable than oil. This is actually something that is true. Data is so incredibly valuable. I've talked about this in other videos. But if you know how to gather, organize, and interpret data in such a way where you can make really good business decisions, that is pretty much an invaluable skill. And statistics teaches you a lot of the skills that you need in order to do that. So if you decide to become a statistician, they're going to be growing at about 33%. And there's 45,000 jobs available now. And that means 10 years from now, there's going to be an employment change of 14,900 jobs, which is good. If you decide to become a data scientist, there's about 32,000 jobs available now. It's growing at 15%, which means 10 years down the line, there's going to be another 5,000 jobs available, which again, is excellent. If you want to become a software developer, there's 1.5 million jobs available right now. It's growing 22%, which is really good, especially considering how many jobs there are. And that means 10 years down the line, there's going to be 316,000 new jobs that pop up. Now if you do a search on some of the common job websites, and you type in statistics degree to see how many of them have that keyword in their postings, about 28,500 of them actually have that word listed. Compare that to archaeology degree, for instance, which only has about 408 job postings. Overall, when it comes to demand, statistics degrees are in very high demand. I'm going to go ahead and give this one a 9.5 out of 10. Next on the list, we're going to be talking about X factors. So X factors in my opinion is another very subjective section. This is just where I see the career and the degree going, based on a ton of different factors like flexibility, what I think is going to happen in the future when it comes to automation, soft and hard skills that you learn when you're studying this degree, all kinds of different factors like that. So when it comes to flexibility, this is a very, very flexible degree. There's so many different career paths that you can go down. There's biostatistics, economic statistics, business statistics, agricultural statistics, you can also leave the statistics realm in general and become a computer programmer. You could work in marketing, you could get into business analytics, basically all different types of industries and businesses are going to be using statistics in one way or another. Now, when it comes to automation, sure, there are some parts of this that can be automated. For instance, the process of gathering data, generally speaking, that part can be automated or outsourced somewhat. However, when it comes to the process of organizing and making some kind of sense of all that data that you gathered, I do not think that that part can be automated. And will robots take my job.com tends to agree with me. They say that there's about a 22% chance of automation, which is on the lower side. Now, when you look at how valuable a skill in general is to learn, zip recruiter does have a skill index, and they did rank statistics at 68, which is well above average. When you look at it, mathematic related skills in general do tend to get paid really well just because of the fact that not very many people like math and not very many people are good at it. So there's a lot here, but overall, I'm going to go ahead and give this section an 8.5 out of 10. So when it comes to the pros of this degree, you're going to see great demand. The demand for this one is amazing. It's also very flexible, which means let's say you have a really good plan laid out, you know, you want to become an actuary, for instance, and in five years into your career, you decide, I don't want to be an actuary anymore. Well, if you get a statistics degree, then there are a lot of other options out there for you. I always tell people to aim for about $75,000 a year or more because studies have shown that your happiness increases up to about $75,000 to $80,000 a year. After that point, your happiness doesn't necessarily increase all that much. But I think that's a really good goal for you to aim for. And of course, that's going to be different depending on where you're living and a lot of other factors. The cons of this degree are going to be math, you know, a lot of people don't really like math. So if you don't like math, you probably don't want to go into this one. Also the difficulty, this is going to be one of the more difficult degrees. There are some degrees that have really high dropout rates. And I would say statistics is right up there with some of those. It's probably not the most difficult, but it's up there. And then the next problem is getting your first job can sometimes be a little bit hard. Now, this is a common problem with a lot of different degrees out there. A lot of people are graduating from college, and then they get into this catch 22 situation where you need two years of experience in order to get a job. So once you get your first job, you get your foot in the door, you're going to be golden. So the overall ranking for this one is going to be 8.625 out of 10. And that is very, very good. That's excellent. Of course, this is going to be different for everybody. For some people, it might be a 10. For others, it might be a one. If you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button in order to defeat the YouTube algorithm. 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