 The college degrees and majors with the highest unemployment rates, that's what we're going to be talking about today. But before we jump into that, make sure to gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. On this channel, we talk about college degrees, careers, personal finance, and other opportunities that are going to lead you to success. On top of that, we also talk about avoiding the common traps that so many people fall for. So if you haven't done it already and that's something that interests you, go ahead, smash the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, and comment down below so that the YouTube algorithm will always suggest my videos to you. And with that out of the way, let's jump right in. We are going to be talking about the college degrees with the highest unemployment rates. So this data was from last year and number five on the list is going to be a construction services degree. Okay, hold up, hold up, hold up, construction is a totally legit and practical skill. What the heck is going on here? This should not be legal. Now hold on here, I'm going to talk about it. We're going to go over why exactly this particular one isn't so good. First of all, the unemployment rate for this one is about 6.1% and again, keep in mind this was last year before the whole situation happened. Unemployment is probably completely different now, but at the time, unemployment rates for college graduates were around 1 to 2%. So 6.1% is bad. On top of that, underemployment, which is basically where somebody either works part-time, so they're not being fully utilized, or they're working a job, but they're not actually using the skills that they learned is really high with this one as well. Underemployment is around 34%. Now the early career pay is pretty decent for this one. It's around 56,000 and then the mid-career pay is going to be around 85,000, which again is not bad. Now on top of that, the amount of people who graduate with a bachelor's level degree, who graduate with this particular degree, construction services, who go on to either get a master's or a doctorate is around 10%, which honestly is not bad. That's actually kind of low. Now construction services majors basically what they learn is the business side of construction. This is going to be things like cost estimating, building codes, facility management, budgeting, and of course, construction safety. Now this is almost a meme at this point. There's a lot of careers out there where you need two years of experience in order to get the job, but you also have to work for two years in order to get two years of experience. And this is an entry-level job. So why is it that an entry-level job needs two years of experience? That kind of sounds a little ridiculous, and it's basically a catch 22. So the thing about this degree is, even though it is focused on the business side of things, which is good, you also have to have a good amount of construction knowledge. So it really helps if you're somebody who knows what they're doing when it comes to the construction side of things as well. And that's not something that you can teach in school. I say this a lot on this channel, but I think anything can be learned, but there's only certain things that can be taught. And that's especially true when it comes to college degrees. There's certain subjects that you simply cannot teach, especially in a classroom setting and construction, something where it's very hands-on like that is a perfect example. I remember I took a class in high school and it was supposed to be like a mechanics class where we learn how to work on vehicles and stuff like that. And I remember the teacher was kind of lazy, if I'm being honest, I mean, sorry, he's a nice guy and stuff, but he was really lazy. And he would just have us read out of a book and then answer questions in the back of the book at the end of the hour. And I remember I did not learn anything the whole time. It was basically just memorizing stuff and then regurgitating it. Now a couple times during the semester, he would actually take us into the garage and we would work on vehicles. And I learned more from those few days where we would just do the work ourselves than all the rest of the time when we would be studying out of a book. And it's kind of the same thing with construction. You're not going to learn construction skills by studying stuff out of a book. So in my opinion, the reason why this one has such a high unemployment rate is because there's a bunch of people coming out of college that know the business side of things, or at least they know the theory behind the business side of things, but they don't have any practical knowledge or practical skills of the construction side of things. So if you went to college and you got this degree, but you also worked a construction job on the side and you had some experience there working with contractors, this could be a really good one for you. But if you don't, it's probably not going to be that great. Number four on the list is going to be philosophy. Philosophy majors focus on thought, ethics, logic, and debate. Philosophy is very interesting. Again, one of my favorite subjects. However, when it comes to getting a job in the real world, it isn't all that helpful. Unfortunately, the unemployment rate for philosophy graduates is about 6.2%. The underemployment rate is a nasty 50.9%. Philosophy majors are going to start off making around $36,000 a year and mid-career pay is going to be somewhere around $62,000, and an insane 57% of people who graduate with a bachelor's in philosophy will go on to get either a master's or a doctorate. Yes, you heard that right. 57% of the people who graduate with a bachelor's degree in philosophy will have to go on to get a master's or a doctorate in order to find a job. It's not too bad. Now, when you first hear that, you might think it's a good thing. Oh, they're getting higher education. That's great. I've learned that this is one of the biggest red flags when it comes to evaluating degrees is how many people have to get a master's or a doctorate. That's a red flag. Now, if you're looking at a mathematics degree or an engineering degree, you're going to see that this number is very low. Not that many people go on to get a master's or a doctorate in engineering. And it's not because they don't want to pursue higher education. A lot of people do. It's just simply because of the fact that they don't have to. They can easily get a job with a bachelor's degree. And so many of them decide that they want to go into the workforce and stay there. Some people decide to go back to school in order to get more education. And that can open up a lot of opportunities for them. But the key word here is they decide to do it. It's their choice. Whereas with a lot of social science, liberal arts, and arts degrees, you'll see that many of them have to go to grad school in order to be considered for a job. It's almost like a master's or a doctorate is the new bachelor's degree. So many of them go to grad school, but it's probably not because they were originally planning on it. It's probably because they graduated with a four-year degree, found out they couldn't get a job, and then decided, you know what? I think this is kind of my only option. I'm going to go back to school, spend a ton of money getting a grad school degree and a ton of time as well. And hope for the best. Now, another way to look at this is, let's say you go into engineering or nursing. There are some very obvious careers that you can go for with either of those degrees. For engineering, you would become an engineer. For nursing, you would become a nurse. It's a very straight track and obvious route in order to get a career. With a philosophy graduate, it's not so obvious at all. Very, very few people become philosophers and are able to get paid for that. And the few that are are probably going to have doctorates, they're going to be professors, they're going to write books, and they're going to be world renowned. It's almost like winning the lottery or becoming an actor or an actress in Hollywood. Now, I will say a few things about philosophy here that could be considered positive. I think a lot of very smart people are attracted to this degree, and so the statistics for philosophy actually aren't as bad as some of the other social science related degrees. Now, it's arguable about whether it's because what you learn in philosophy is something that you can apply either directly or indirectly to jobs in the real world or whether people who study philosophy are extremely smart and so they probably would have been successful no matter what degree they went for. This is the old argument of correlation and causation and really nobody knows. But honestly, the world is chuck full of really smart people who are also extremely lazy and lack discipline, so smarts can only get you so far. The second really positive thing that I'll say about philosophy is I do think that it teaches you a lot of soft skills that might not directly lead to you making more money, but I do think that in my opinion, they'll indirectly lead to you being more successful in making more money. Again, this is just my opinion. There's no way that I can prove this, but I will say that about philosophy. It teaches you how to think logically, teaches you how to, you know, prepare arguments and then usually deliver them. These are all skills that can be extremely valuable in the real world. Number three on the list is going to be anthropology and I bet you are not surprised at all to see this one. The unemployment rate for anthropology is 6.6%. On top of that, it has an underemployment rate of 59.1%. Now, with this degree and early career pay, you're going to make around 33,000. Mid career pay is going to be around 57,000. Now, the share of people who graduate with a bachelor's degree that end up going on to get a graduate degree is going to be around 46.9%. Now, anthropology majors basically study the evolution of human beings with a focus on culture. Unfortunately, the only jobs out there that are specifically for anthropologists are going to be at universities, research institutions, and then there'll be a rare job here and there at a museum. Another subject that is extremely interesting, but you're going to have a very tough time finding a job. Also, another one of those careers where if you want to work as an anthropologist, you pretty much have to have either a master's or a doctorate to even be considered. And even then, it's no sure bet nothing is promised. Nearly 47% of people who graduate with an anthropology degree end up going on to grad school to get a master's or a doctorate. So you're not really going to stand out all that much with a master's. And saying that you want to become a tenured anthropology professor is awesome and all. I don't want to ruin your dreams if that's what you want to do, but that's kind of like saying you want to become a rock star or an actor. Lots of people want to become professors in some of these really interesting liberal arts and social science fields, but a lot of them don't end up achieving their goal and that inevitably leads to disappointment. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. Ironically, you're actually much more likely if becoming a professor is your goal to become a professor in a field like engineering or mathematics just because of the fact that not that many people who graduate with one of those degrees end up going on to get a master's or a doctorate. And so you have a lot less competition. On top of that, it's been shown that PhDs like social science or humanities take a lot longer on average than something like engineering. For instance, 57% of people who start an engineering PhD program will finish it within seven years, whereas only 29% of people who start a PhD in humanities will finish it within that same time period. And on top of that, over 10,000 people graduate with an anthropology degree every single year. Yet if you look on monster.com and you type in anthropologist, there's only 180 jobs available. 10,000 people graduating every single year, 180 jobs total available. So as a comparison, let's look at electrical engineering, which has about 12,000 graduates every single year. And then let's search it on monster.com. There is over 40,000 job postings available for electrical engineering. It's all about supply and demand. And it's very obvious to see this. There's a ton of people who would love to get paid to do anthropology for a living because it's so interesting. And so many people like it. Yet there are very people out there that will actually pay you to be a professional anthropologist. And the coolest thing about engineering is let's say you decide you don't want to be an electrical engineer, there's tons of different jobs out there in different companies and industries that would be more than happy to hire someone who has an electrical engineering degree. Engineering degrees are universally respected. And I can show you because there's basically data here that was collected by the latest US census. And it shows that people who graduate with an engineering degree make on average $3.5 million throughout their lifetime. Whereas people who graduate with any degree make about 2.4 million. So that's way more. And you see down the line that people who graduate with an engineering degree get paid really well no matter what field they go into. You look down at the very bottom, for instance, and engineers that work in arts and media make a heck of a lot more $700,000 throughout a lifetime than your average degree who works in arts and media. The comparison is $3 million versus 2.3 million. Number two on the list is going to be liberal arts. This one has a 6.7% unemployment rate. They have a 58% underemployment rate. You're going to start off making around $33,000 a year in your early career pay. Mid-career pay is going to be around $60,000. And the share of them who have a graduate degree is going to be around 27%, which is on the higher side. Now liberal arts majors basically study kind of like a little bit of everything when it comes to social sciences, humanities, and arts related degrees. It's kind of like when you don't know what to order at a restaurant. So you just get like a sample platter of everything. You're not really an expert on anything. You don't have any like specialized knowledge in one area. You're kind of just a jack of all trades. And I've spoken about this before, but overwhelmingly, if you're going to have a choice between being a specialist and a generalist, specialists win almost all of the time. Specialists make more money, they get treated better, they have better job satisfaction, there's more jobs available for them, and the list just goes on and on. And if you don't believe me, look at specialists that are doctors versus general practitioners. A lot of the time, specialists that are medical doctors will make two to three times as much as general practitioners. So the main purpose of you going to college is for you to learn specialized skills that are going to help you start a career. Sure, a lot of the time people will put down in the comments section that some of these degrees will teach you soft skills which will indirectly help you in life. And I don't even disagree with you there. I think that these degrees will teach you soft skills and it might indirectly help you make more money or just have an overall better quality of life. I think that you would learn these soft skills pretty much no matter what degree you pursue though. And really, I think you'd learn these skills pretty much no matter what you did as long as you actually did something. So for instance, if you took those four years and you tried to start a business and maybe you fail three or four times in a row, you would learn a lot from failing four times in a row with four different businesses. I can almost guarantee you, you'd learn a lot of soft skills as well as some not so soft skills. And again, I always say this, if you really love these subjects, consider double majoring it, maybe minor in it, study it on your own, take extra classes in it. But for the most part, unless you have a really, really good plan, you probably should not just major in this one degree. And the reason for that is because college costs you on average about $40,000 in debt and it takes four years of your life. So you need to make sure that you get a good return on your investment. Number one on the list is going to be mass media. Now mass media is a type of communications degree. It's very closely related to communications. The unemployment rate here is a ridiculous 7.8%. Underemployment is an almost equally ridiculous 55%. You're going to expect to make around $35,000 a year in your early career and mid-career pay is going to be around 60,000. Now the share of people who graduate with this one and they end up getting a master's or a doctor, it is around 18%, which is a little bit higher than average, but it's not too bad. Now a lot of people get this degree because they want to start a career in journalism or broadcasting. However, this is an industry that has been heavily disrupted by technology and automation. Most of the careers in this industry have negative job growth. There's just not that many jobs out there and about 9,000 people graduate with this degree every single year. Now communications degrees have this issue of just being a little bit too general. Not that it isn't an important subject. I'm not saying that at all. It is very important. Learning how to communicate is a good skill to learn. However, it's just so general that it's hard for you to justify to a potential employer why you're going to be able to cover your salary. If they're paying you $50,000, are you going to be able to cover that $50,000? Are you going to be draining the entire business? This is simple economics. The business has to make money overall. Communication majors also have the reputation of being really easy and that's why a lot of athletes tend to major in communications just because they know that in a few years they're probably going to be making like a million dollars in the NFL or the NBA. So why do they even care about their degree? If you haven't done it already, go ahead, smash the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, etc. And definitely, definitely do not forget to check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.