 is a general business 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 some of the common financial traps that so many people end up falling for. So 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 so that you never miss out. So a general business degree is basically exactly what it sounds like. You're gonna be learning a little bit of marketing, finance, accounting, a little bit of management. You're not gonna specialize in one specific area, so you won't be an expert in that area. You're kinda gonna be just a business generalist. Now around 25,000 people graduate with this degree every year, and that's quite a bit. So we're gonna go over this degree and we're gonna talk about some of the most important things. We're gonna go over the salary, job satisfaction, how much demand there is, and then other important X factors. So first of all, let's talk about salary. A general business degree, you're gonna expect to make around $47,000 a year starting out and $83,000 in mid-career pay. Now it's hard to say what career specifically you're gonna go into with a general business degree, but when you look at all business-related careers in general, according to BLS, they make around $69,000 a year, which is much higher than the average of $39,000. Now again, this is a very general business degree, so there's so many different career paths that people could potentially go down, but according to BLS, a lot of people end up becoming accountants or budget analysts. Accountants make around $71,000 a year and budget analysts make around $76,000. In my video I did where I talked about the degrees that create the most millionaires, business major or business-related degrees came out about six out of the top 10. And this is because pretty much no matter what industry you go into or business you start to work for, you're gonna be learning very valuable skills that are going to lead you to success. A lot of people talk down on business majors, but they're actually some of the best majors out there when you look at the numbers. And there's a very good chance that as a business degree graduate, especially after a few years of learning skills and getting some real-world experience, there's a very good chance that you're gonna start your own business. And studies have shown that small business owners do end up making quite a bit more than people who have a normal nine to five job. So of course, this really is gonna depend on what career path you go down, whether you wanna start your own business, whether you want just kind of a chill career, or whether you wanna maybe become a manager or try to become an executive. Either way, you're gonna have a lot of flexibility when it comes to getting a business degree and that's one of the big strengths. According to the last US census, business-related degrees on average over a lifetime will earn around $2.6 million, whereas all degrees in general earn around 2.4 million. However, you see the ones that go into business will make around 2.8 million and the ones who go into management will make around 3.3 million. And this of course doesn't count the fact that many of them will go on to start their own businesses in the future. You also see that they do well pretty much no matter what industry they end up going into. And this is because business degrees are so flexible like I mentioned before. So overall, I'm gonna give the salary slash earnings scores, you know, earnings if you end up becoming an entrepreneur, about nine out of 10. Next, we're gonna be talking about satisfaction. This is one of the most important things that you wanna think about. According to ZIP recruiter, those who get a business-related degrees are the second least likely to experience regret. Only about 15% of people who get a business degree regret their choice, but very important to mention here, the number one reason for regret is that it's too general. The skills you learn in a lot of these business-related degrees are a little bit general. You're not learning any specialized skills in one's particular industry or anything like that. Now, when it comes to satisfaction, I like to talk about two things specifically. And that is job satisfaction and then also meaning. Job satisfaction is pretty self-explanatory. If you have a really fun job that you absolutely love doing, you're gonna have a lot of job satisfaction. That doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna have a lot of meaning, though. Meaning is how much you think your job positively contributes to the world. So the example I always use is maybe you get a job playing video games professionally that would have high job satisfaction, but it might not necessarily have high meaning. Whereas if you got a job as a garbage man, you might have high meaning, but it wouldn't necessarily have high job satisfaction. Both of these things are very important to take into consideration. And of course, it's gonna be different for everybody. For some people, one will matter more than the other. So when it comes to meaning, a general business degree is gonna have a 52% meaning score, meaning 52% of the people who got this degree think that the job that they went down, the career path that they went down, ended up significantly positively impacting the world. Compare this to one of the highest on the list, which is radiation therapy at 91%, and one of the lowest on the list, which is gonna be plastics engineering technology at 31%. Overall, it is slightly above average when it comes to a meaning score, which is a good thing. One career path you might go down is becoming a business operations specialist. They have a job satisfaction score of about 69% according to pay scale, which again, is on the higher side. Nothing here really jumps off the page though, especially when it comes to a business related degree. It's honestly not super impressive. So overall, I'm gonna give this one a score of seven out of 10 when it comes to satisfaction. Now, next we're gonna be talking about demand and business related professions in general do tend to have decent demand. According to BLS, business and financial related occupations are going to be growing at about 5% over the next 10 years, which is above average. When you look up the keyword general business degree on monster.com, you'll see that around 80,000 of the job listings have this as a keyword in their description. If you compare that to an excellent degree like computer science, for instance, they have around 141,000 job offerings. And if you compare that to a degree that's well known to not have very many jobs like anthropology, there's only about 829. So of course that little test isn't perfect, but generally speaking, that's a good sign that there are quite a few jobs out there. Now, if you look at the number of jobs out there in general in terms of careers and jobs that companies are actually hiring for, you will see that engineering degrees, business degrees and computer science degrees are almost always gonna come out on top. So that's a good sign, but unfortunately the problem here is when you look a little bit closer you'll see that a general business degree is not gonna be one of the types of business degrees that is really coveted. Finance and accounting are gonna be much higher up on the list. So overall, I'm gonna give this one a seven out of 10 rating when it comes to demand. In general, it's above average, but when you compare it to the other business-related degrees it's not gonna be quite as good. And I think the reason for this is because it's just so general. You're not really learning anything specific and that's what companies want. They want you to have specific skills. If you were having surgery on your heart you would want a heart surgeon to perform that surgery. You wouldn't want just a general doctor. And it's the same thing for most businesses. They want somebody who's specialized in a specific area to do a specific job. Next one on the list is going to be X factors. And this could be anything from the skills that you learn when you're getting the degree to how easily it will be automated or how flexible the degree is in general. So when it comes to X factors, business degrees in general usually score very high. And the reason for this is because they're extremely flexible. Think about it. As a business degree graduate you can get a job with just about any company and just about any industry and there's a ton of different career paths that you can go down. On top of that the skills that you learn will likely prepare you to open your own business in the future if that's the direction that you wanna go. Business degrees also pair extremely well with other types of degrees. You can combine a business degree in double major or dual major in all kinds of different types of degrees like technology, mathematics, et cetera. There's a lot of types of degrees out there that don't really pair together all that well but when it comes to business degrees they're synergistic with just about anything else. So like I mentioned before you are going to make more with a business related degree over a lifetime than you will with most other types of degrees. The only ones that beat out business when it comes to earnings over a lifetime with your salary are gonna be engineering and computer science and math. And like I mentioned before when I did the video on the degrees that create the most millionaires business related degrees did hold six out of the top 10 spots and I don't think salary actually has a lot to do with that. I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that business related majors tend to learn skills at a much younger age that are going to be good for you throughout your entire lifetime when it comes to personal finance. Skills like budgeting, saving and investing are things that you pretty much have to learn in any business related degree and you have to learn it at a young age. And then on top of that a lot of business majors do end up going on to starting their own business after they've gotten a few years of experience. Overall the skills that you end up learning when you get a business related degree tend to be extremely highly valued on the market. Zip recruiter did a skills index where they basically figured out which skills are most valued by companies and a lot of the ones on the list are business related. Things like project planning and business process management ranked around 86 out of 100 whereas the most valuable skill which is software engineering ranked 88 out of 100. When it comes to a very general business degree like this though you want to make sure that you either take extra classes, do internships, things like that so that you learn specific skills in whatever area that you're trying to go for. Another thing to keep in mind is there are a lot of careers out there that are going to be automated in the next 20 to 30 years. I think with a business degree you are somewhat future proof just because of the fact that even if your specific job gets automated the skills that you learn with a business degree and the skills that you learn when you're working that job are going to translate to other types of careers. Business does have a really good combination of both hard and soft skills which kind of leads to you being a little bit future proof. Business operations specialist for instance only about 23% chance that it gets automated. So one of the pros of getting a general business degree is there's all kinds of different career paths that you can go down. There's so many different specializations. With a general business degree you can work for just about any business in the world and this would also be a great degree for you to double major in and pair it with another degree. Some of the cons here are the lack of specialization is really bad. The fact that you're kind of just a generalist and you know a tiny little bit about everything is not a good thing. Business degrees are already general enough you can work for just about any company and any industry and work for all kinds of different types of careers. So the fact that this is a general business degree and business degrees are already general in the first place is a huge downside. Overall, I'm gonna give this one a score of 7.75 out of 10. That's gonna be good when you compare it to all different types of degrees but when you compare it to other types of business degrees it's definitely not one of the best. With this one I would highly recommend maybe double majoring in a different type of degree or taking extra classes on the side. You're definitely gonna wanna figure out exactly what career path that you wanna go down and then reverse engineer it, figure out what steps you need to take in order to get there. A lot of the time this is gonna involve getting an internship so that you can learn specific skills in that industry or that career. If you don't wanna check out other types of degrees and my updated rankings which I'll be updating every few months you can check that out in my Patreon down below that's gonna be my college degree ranker. And if you haven't done it already go ahead and gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, et cetera that you have on the video and before you leave check out my other videos right here that I made them just for you. I made them just for you.