 Is a geology major or a geology degree worth it? Is this a good major for you to pursue? 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 college degrees, personal finance, careers, and opportunities that are going to lead you to success. And we also go over how you can avoid some of the common financial traps that so many people fall 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 so that you never miss out. So first of all, let's talk about geology and what it actually is. It focuses mostly on the materials that are on the surface of the earth, so rocks for instance, but it also includes the processes that act upon the surface as well as the organisms that inhabit it. About 5,600 people graduate with a bachelor's in geology every year. So we're going to go ahead and evaluate this degree in four major categories, four categories that I think are the most important ones for you to know about before you actually get into it. And the first one of these four is going to be salary. So according to pay scale, a geology degree graduate will make around $48,000 a year starting out and $89,600 in mid-career pay. This is relatively good. It's not one of the best on the list like chemical engineering, for instance, which would be $73,000 a year starting out and $128,000 in mid-career pay. And for context, this ranks around $279 out of 835 possible degrees. So one career path you could go down is becoming a geoscientist and they make around $92,000 a year. A lot of the time people who get geology degrees will end up working in the natural gas industry just because there's so much money in those industries, but that means that you'll likely have to move somewhere in order to get a job. And on top of that, if the economy goes down or some kind of regulation pops up, you might end up losing your job. So overall, when it comes to salary, this one is going to be good, but not great. I'm going to go ahead and give this one a score of 7 out of 10. Next on the list, we're going to be talking about satisfaction, and I always like to divide this one into two different important sections. One of them is going to be meaning and the other one is going to be job satisfaction. So meaning is basically how much you think your job positively impacts the world, whereas job satisfaction would just be how much you enjoy doing your job. So for instance, maybe you could get a job professionally listening to music and that would have very high job satisfaction, but it might not score necessarily as well on the meaning side of things. Whereas maybe somebody gets a job as a janitor, which would score pretty high on the meaning side of things, you're definitely positively contributing to society, but you might not score as high when it comes to job satisfaction. So with that being said, geology degrees report about a 55% meaning score, which means 55% of the people who graduated with a degree went on to get jobs that they think positively impacts the world in a significant way. This is above average when you compare to all different types of degrees out there. So this is pretty good. If you went on to become a geoscientist, for instance, you would have about a 55% meaning score. So around the same. And then you'd also have around 72% job satisfaction, according to pay scale. The 72% is again above average. So honestly, if you're able to get a job as a geoscientist after getting your geology degree, you're probably going to be pretty happy with it. So overall, I'm going to go ahead and give satisfaction in eight out of 10 for the score. Next section we're going to be talking about is demand. And this might be the most important section of all. The reason I say this is because all of the other factors that we're going to talk about are probably going to be influenced the most by demand. The demand is going to influence how much you get paid, which will influence your salary. It'll also have a lot to do with how happy you are with your job, because if you have skills that they value and they're willing to pay quite a bit, they're probably going to treat you better as well. Now, according to BLS, right now there's around 31,800 jobs available. It's going to be growing about 5%, which is faster than average for geoscientists. And that means over the next 10 years there's going to be around 1,600 jobs that pop up. The 5% growth is faster than average, but the fact that there's only about 1,600 jobs popping up is a little bit alarming, especially considering the fact that there's around 5,600 people graduating with this degree every single year. And if you search the keyword geology degree on monster.com, only about 1,000 job applications pop up that have that keyword in it, which is generally speaking, not a very good sign. To put that in perspective, a really good degree that has a lot of demand like computer science is going to have about 141,000 job listings that pop up, and a degree that's not very good. It has almost no demand like anthropology is going to have around 829 jobs pop up. So that's honestly not very good, although I will say when I was doing my research for this degree, if you're willing to move, you have a much better chance of getting your first job. And once you get those first few years of experience in, it's going to be much easier to get your second job. But overall, when it comes to demand, this one is not great. I'm going to go ahead and give this one a 6.5 out of 10. Next on the list, we're going to be talking about the X factors. And this could range anywhere from how flexible the degree is, how easily automated the skills that you're going to learn are, how valuable the skills are in general, etc. So when it comes to flexibility, this one doesn't score very well. When you compare this to a business degree, for instance, if you get a business degree, and you plan on going into marketing, for instance, and then you say, you know what, I don't really want to be a marketer anymore, I'm going to switch my career path. It's relatively easy for you to do that. Whereas if you get a geology degree, you learn those specialized skills that you have to learn in order to become a geologist or a geoscientist, and then you decide later on that you don't want to go down that career path. Well, it's going to be really hard for you to switch careers. It's not impossible for you to do it, but it's not going to be nearly as seamless as something like a business degree. With that being said, geology is better than some of the other science related degrees. You'll likely have to move in order to get your first job. But once you get that job and you get some experience, you're going to be good to go. Now, I've talked about this a lot before on the channel, but the natural gas industry tends to pay extremely well. The highest paying degree overall is petroleum engineering, for instance. There's even jobs that you can get with zero experience, zero degree, no training at all, and you can get paid up to six figures a year. Now, of course, a lot of these jobs involve you living out in the middle of nowhere, sometimes even living out in the middle of the ocean. But if you're willing to do that, you can make really good money in the natural gas industry. But with that being said, there's honestly not that many other positives to this one. If you know exactly what you want to do, you know exactly the steps that you need to take in order to get there because you've really done your research, then this can be a really good degree. However, if you mess up, you don't plan it out really well, or you do plan it out really well, but then just things happen, which, you know, that happens to everybody, then this one can be a little bit of a trap. Overall, I'm going to give this one an X factor score of seven out of 10. So some of the pros here is it does tend to have a higher than average job satisfaction and meaning. You'll likely be spending a lot of time outdoors, and if you're that type of person who really wants to spend a lot of time outside, then this can be good for you. And if you are able to get a job, it's probably going to be paying you relatively well because of the fact that most of the jobs are in the natural gas industry. Some of the cons are that it's going to be very volatile. You might have to move somewhere in order to get a job maybe out in the middle of nowhere. And if something happens to the economy or some kind of regulation happens, you might end up losing your job. The skills that you learn aren't going to be very easily transferable, unfortunately, as well. And it will likely be difficult for you to get your first job starting out. You'll probably have to move somewhere that's undesirable. So overall, I'm going to give this one a 7.125 out of 10. This one can be good if you do your research and you really know exactly what you're getting yourself into. Speaking of research, I made a really cool tool. It's going to be down in the description in my Patreon. It's going to be the college degree ranker. I'm going to be updating this every few months. And my goal is to make the most accurate college degree ranking system that exists. At this time, version 1.1 is available down in the description below. So you should definitely check that out. But if you haven't done it already, go ahead and gently tap the like button for the YouTube algorithm. Hit that subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below, share the video, do all the stuff. And but most importantly, guys, most importantly, don't click off the video. Check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.