Data on AI and College Majors

Counselors are hearing more questions about AI and careers than almost any other topic right now, and two new pieces of data are worth having on hand for those conversations.

The first is a Census Bureau working paper that tracked recent graduates before and after ChatGPT arrived in late 2022. Researchers ranked majors by how exposed their work is to AI. Among the most exposed tenth, the likelihood of being employed in the first quarter after graduation fell by five percentage points, and initial earnings dropped 13 percent. The authors compared the size of that earnings hit to graduating into a large recession. Computer-related majors showed the biggest declines, while nursing and education were among the least exposed.

Some context matters here. The earnings gap narrowed over time, shrinking to about 5 percent two years after graduation. And because this is a working paper describing group averages, it isn’t a forecast for any individual student.

The second data point comes from a Niche analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, reported by the Washington Post. Only 9.4 percent of occupations with a median wage of $100,000 or more don’t require a bachelor’s degree, and those jobs account for just 0.3 percent of the 13.8 million annual openings projected in occupations where a bachelor’s isn’t required. Openings that don’t require a degree pay a median of about $45,000, compared with $96,000 for those that do. The well-paid exceptions, such as air traffic controllers and commercial pilots, come with extensive training or certification requirements.

Neither finding supports a simple rule like “avoid these majors” or “skip college.” What they suggest is that students are better served by looking past the name of a major to the work behind it. What does an entry-level job in this field look like now? How are employers hiring for it? Those are good questions to bring to a student who is drawn to a field that’s in the headlines.