These college majors have the best job prospects — and they aren’t what students expect

For many students, majoring in finance is a proven pathway to a well-paying career and job security.

In fact, U.S. graduates believe that finance offers the best career prospects overall, considering today’s economic climate, according to a new survey by the CFA Institute, a non-profit focused on financial education. The group polled more than 9,000 current college students and recent graduates between the ages of 18 and 25.

While confidence about career prospects in finance increased over the past year, confidence decreased in other areas including STEM and healthcare, the CFA Institute also found.

However, finance ranks well behind many other majors when it comes to employment opportunities after college, other data shows.

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“For me, a career in finance represents a pivot to stability,” said Rafael Perez, 29, who is pursuing a Master of Science degree in finance at California State University in Sacramento. “I’ve been a creative my entire life, so discovering my affinity for finance was a relief in a sense.” 

Perez says he still experiences some pushback from his peers. “When I tell people I’m getting an MS in finance, they often jokingly call me a ‘finance bro,'” he said. “Despite the negative connotations of the phrase, it also reflects an expectation of financial success and prestige.”

Students and their families are paying more attention to which college majors are most likely to pay off, and are putting greater emphasis on a degree’s return on investment, according to Peter Watkins, CFA Institute’s senior director of university programs. “There’s an awareness from students that they have to make sure the degrees will make them work-ready,” he said.

As young adults enter the real world, they are facing an increasingly tight labor market.

According to a recent analysis of labor market conditions for recent college graduates by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, job opportunities “deteriorated noticeably in the first quarter of 2025.” Among this group, the unemployment rate jumped to 5.8% — the highest reading since 2021.

Although finance majors had higher salaries compared to most other majors, grads with nutrition, art history and philosophy degrees all outperformed both finance and STEM fields when it comes to employment prospects, the New York Fed found.

For finance and computer science, the unemployment rate in those fields was 3.7% and 6.1%, respectively. By comparison, the unemployment rate for art history majors was 3%, and for nutritional sciences, the unemployment rate was just 0.4%, the New York Fed found.

After notching significant gains since 2020, the rise of computer science majors came to a near standstill this year, other reports show, fueled by concerns that artificial intelligence is rapidly taking over jobs in the field.

Economics majors also fared worse than majors such as theology and philosophy when it came to the employment rates for recent college graduates, according to the New York Fed. Philosophy majors have an unemployment rate of 3.2%, for example, and for economics, it’s 4.9%.

The New York Fed’s report was based on Census data from 2023 and unemployment rates of recent college graduates.

The disconnect between the New York Fed’s outcomes by major and the CFA survey findings — which is based on perceptions — is likely due in part to societal expectations, particularly from parents, Watkins said. “It may possibly be parental guidance, as in, ‘go for business,'” he said.

Meanwhile, demand for humanities majors is on the rise, and with good reason.

At a conference last year, Robert Goldstein, the chief operating officer of BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager, said the firm was adjusting its hiring strategy for recent grads. “We have more and more conviction that we need people who majored in history, in English, and things that have nothing to do with finance or technology,” Goldstein said.

This demand for liberal arts degrees is fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence, which drives the need for creative thinking and so-called soft skills. 

“It’s a bit of a gold rush in AI, people who are adopting quickly are going to succeed quickly,” Watkins said.

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