 is studying a chemistry major to get a chemistry degree worth it. That's what we're gonna 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 gonna lead you to success, and we also go over how you can avoid some of the common financial traps that so many people end up falling for. If that sounds like something that interests you and you haven't done it already, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and ring the notification bell. Only like 18% of you have. So that you never miss an opportunity. But let's jump into it. Back to the main subject is a chemistry degree worth it. We're gonna be talking about this today, but first let's go ahead and define what a chemistry degree is. So a chemistry degree is gonna be the study of matter and all of its different forms and how it transforms between one form or the other. There's a lot of science, of course, but you're also gonna be doing lab work as well as mathematics. There's about 14,000 people that graduate with a bachelor's in chemistry every year. Now I've said this before in a lot of other videos, but I have to say in this one as well, science degrees compared to the other STEM degrees, in my opinion, are a little bit overrated. A lot of people think that STEM degrees are amazing and if you get any type of STEM degree, companies are just gonna be lined up, ready to give you a job right after you graduate. And that's just not true. The truth is, if you get some science bachelor's degrees and you expect to get a job, chances are you're gonna have to get a master's. Another one. Or a doctorate. And another one. And if you're gonna go, on average, about $40,000 in debt in order to get your degree, you can't just snap your fingers and make it go away. Now we're gonna go over four different sections here. The first one is going to be salary. Then we're gonna talk about satisfaction. Then we're gonna go over demand. And then lastly, we're gonna talk about X factors. First, let's go ahead and talk about salary. With a chemistry degree, you would expect to make around $49,000 a year in your first five years working. And then mid-career pay would be 93,000. You can compare this to petroleum engineering, which is an extremely high-paying degree, or recreational therapy, which doesn't pay very well. And you're gonna see that it is somewhere in the middle, but it's definitely above average when it comes to your salary. Now one career path you might go down is becoming a chemist, of course, and they make around $78,000 a year. Now if you look at the median annual earnings for young people, people between the ages of 25 and 29, for all different types of degrees, you see that STEM degrees tend to rank pretty well. So not only do you make more money down the line, but you also make more money right off the bat at the beginning of your career. Overall, this one's pretty good when it comes to science degrees and above average when you compare it to all degrees. So I'm gonna give this one a seven out of 10 when it comes to salary or earnings potential. Next, we're gonna be talking about satisfaction, and first we're gonna go over meaning, which is how much your career positively affects the rest of the world. So when it comes to meaning, chemistry comes in at 55%, and you can compare that to radiation therapy at 91%, which is the highest, and one of the lowest is plastics engineering technology at 31%. So it's right there in the middle, I would say it's slightly above average. If you look at job satisfaction for something like material scientists, you'd see that it comes in at about 67%, which again is slightly above average as well. Now science degrees tend to be some of the most regretted degrees, they're the second most regretted in fact, at 35% of the people who get the degrees regretting them according to Zip Recruiter. And the reason for that is because a lot of people expect to be able to get a job with just a bachelor's, and unfortunately for many types of careers out there when it comes to science, you have to get a master's or a doctorate. However, chemistry is one of the better science degrees, and overall I would say that science degrees, when you're actually able to get a job, you do seem to be relatively satisfied with the career. Now this is extremely subjective, like I said, it depends on your personality, it depends on the industry you work in, what you're good at, company that you work for in some cases. However, I'm gonna go ahead and give this one a 7.5 out of 10. Now when it comes to demands, science related degrees are pretty average for the most part. You can sometimes get a science related degree and then go into the health field, but that of course is gonna be extra schooling. Health related degrees, health related careers have the highest demand out of any type of career out there, even higher than technology. But let's say you're just sticking with a bachelor's and you're trying to get a job with just a four year degree. So if you wanted to become a chemist, that one's growing at about 5% over the next 10 years. And if you wanted to become a material scientist, that one's growing at 3%, which is about average. Now if you search monster.com for the keyword chemistry, you're gonna see that only around 600 jobs pop up. That means only 600 people had the keyword chemistry degree and their job listing. Compare that to computer science, which had 141,000 and anthropology, which is around 800. Now it's not a perfect test by any means, but it gives me a hint that not a lot of hiring managers or owners are looking for people who have a chemistry degree. There's not an insane amount of demand out there like computer science, for instance, for people who have software development skills. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that you won't get hired with a chemistry degree, but it is a little bit of a red flag. So with this one, I'm gonna go ahead and give it a 6.5 out of 10. Next, we're gonna be talking about X factors, which encompasses everything else that we didn't talk about already. So first, when it comes to physical science degrees like chemistry, they make around $2.6 million over a lifetime, which is more than the average degree which makes around 2.4 million. On top of that, you see that if they go into other career paths like management, for instance, they can make around 3.4 million over a lifetime. I think the reason for this is because if you get a chemistry degree, you're gonna have a pretty strong background in science, lab work, and mathematics. And although that might not directly translate to helping you get a job, indirectly it's probably going to help you down the line. There's a lot to say with some of the hard skills as well as some of the soft skills that you learned during college indirectly helping you throughout your entire life. And it looks like physical science degrees are pretty good all across the board. Now when it comes to the skills that you learned, chemistry as a skill is rated 56 out of 100 on Zip Recruiters skill index. Compare this to the highest rated skill of software engineering, which is 88 out of 100, and the lowest rated, which is industrial sewing at eight out of 100. So it's gonna be somewhere in the middle there. So the skill of chemistry is somewhat valued on the market. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have more value or less value than anything else. It simply means that people who own businesses and hiring managers are more likely to hire you and pay you more money if you have the skill of chemistry because for whatever reason, it's pretty hot right now. You know, maybe a hundred years ago, industrial sewing would have been the hottest skill around, but unfortunately right now it's not really needed. Now when it comes to automation, science degrees, science careers in general are relatively low and chemists is no different. It only has around a 10% chance of being automated. And when it comes to difficulty, the science related degrees are pretty high up there in my opinion, but they're probably not some of the hardest ones except for physics. That one's really difficult. I think engineering degrees and mathematics degrees realistically are probably gonna be harder for the average person. But again, that's extremely subjective. It could be completely different depending on who you are. You know, I took a lot of chemistry classes in undergrad, organic chemistry is really difficult. Physical chemistry really difficult as well. I'm sure some of those upper chemistry level classes get even harder, but I don't think it's gonna be as hard as something like engineering. For what it's worth, the reference I always use, which kind of goes off of the dropout rate for the different majors says that chemistry is the third hardest one. Let me know down below if you're a chemistry major, how difficult it was. I mean, I'm not trying to say that it's easy or anything by that by any means, but I didn't remember thinking that it was one of the hardest majors, but hey, maybe I'm wrong. But anyways, when it comes to flexibility, unfortunately, this is where some of the science degrees kind of don't do so well. For one, out of all the different types of degrees, science degrees kind of make the worst combination with other degrees. So there's some types of degrees where if you double major in something else, it might not be that great on its own, but if you double major, you can actually make it work. With science related degrees, I mean, I guess it depends on what career path you're going down, but double majoring in something else isn't gonna help nearly as much. And when it comes to flexibility, they're honestly not that good either. A lot of the skills that you're gonna learn are gonna be relatively narrow. They're not gonna extrapolate out to other things nearly as well as something like business, for instance. And so that makes the overall score 6.875 out of 10. This is one of these degrees where you can definitely make it work as long as you do your research, you know what you're getting yourself into, but it's not gonna be one of those slam dunk degrees where you're pretty much set once you get a bachelor's. You're gonna wanna go above and beyond. You're probably gonna have to learn extra skills, do internships and network like crazy. On top of that, I always like to mention this because it's so important you should contact somebody who is in whatever career paths you're interested in and just ask them about what they would recommend that you do. In fact, you should contact a few people in each career path if you can. I've made entire videos about how to go through that whole process and you can check them out on my channel. If you want some other help with degrees, I did make a college degree ranker. It's gonna be in my Patreon down below. Been working really hard on this and it's basically something that ranks different college degrees and it makes the whole research process for you much easier. If you're one of these people that keeps commenting on my videos about how you wanna see your degree sooner and you can't wait for it, then just go ahead, check it out, do the Patreon and you can see it and it's version 1.1 right now. It's not done yet, but it's a work in progress but I think it's the best list out there. I'm also gonna be uploading other exclusive content like a stock portfolio for instance. Now if you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button. Hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera. Share the video with your friends and before you leave, check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.