Looking at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s labor market data for recent college graduates (ages 22 to 27), these specific ten majors show a wide variation in employment outcomes.
While majors with “art” or “media” in the title traditionally struggle with soft market demand, others—like aerospace engineering or physics—frequently see spikes in unemployment not because demand is low, but because graduates hold out for hyper-specialized, highly selective roles or security clearances.
Here is how these ten majors rank by their recent unemployment rates, along with underemployment data for broader context.
The Unemployment Ranking
| Rank | Major | Recent Unemployment Rate | Underemployment Rate | Market Dynamics |
| 1 | Art History | 8.0% | 62.3% | High competition for a tiny pool of museum, gallery, and academic roles. |
| 2 | Liberal Arts | 7.9% | 56.7% | Broad skillset that makes finding a highly specific corporate entry point challenging. |
| 3 | Fine Arts | 7.9% | 55.5% | Very high freelance and self-employment rates skew corporate employment metrics. |
| 4 | Aerospace Engineering | 7.8% | 17.9% | Highly clustered hiring (defense/space) where background checks or budget cycles stall placement. |
| 5 | History | 7.5% | 53.5% | Often requires post-graduate tracking (law/academia) to avoid early-career underemployment. |
| 6 | English Language | 6.6% | 48.4% | Broad corporate utility, but faces a slower initial job search out of school. |
| 7 | Mass Media | 6.3% | 47.7% | Industry-wide consolidation in traditional media platforms impacts initial placement. |
| 8 | Physics | 6.2% | 31.2% | High entry-level friction as graduates pivot into finance, data science, or engineering. |
| 9 | Commercial Art & Graphic Design | 6.0% | 33.7% | Highly gig-reliant economy makes traditional full-time roles intensely competitive. |
| 10 | Sociology | 5.5% | 49.6% | High placement in non-profit, social service, and HR roles, though often underemployed early on. |
Critical Insights
The Aerospace Anomaly: While Aerospace Engineering sits high on the unemployment list, its underemployment rate (17.9%) is exceptionally low. This means that while it takes a bit longer for these graduates to land a job due to strict hiring protocols (such as defense sector security clearances at Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, or SpaceX), once they do secure a role, it is almost always a high-paying, high-skill position directly in their field.
The Art vs. Commercial Art Divide: Art History and Fine Arts top the list, experiencing both high unemployment and severe underemployment (exceeding 55%). However, shifting the curriculum toward business application—as seen in Commercial Art & Graphic Design—materially improves marketability, dropping the unemployment rate and lowering underemployment significantly to 33.7%.
The Underemployment Trap: For humanities majors like History, Sociology, and Liberal Arts, the real hurdle isn’t just staying unemployed; it is underemployment. More than half of these graduates start their careers in roles that do not legally or practically require a college degree, highlighting the importance of early internship and skills specialization.