Career Finder Methodology

We used data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2019 American Community Survey (ACS) to determine the most popular and highest earning careers for each college major. To find the fastest growing career paths for each major, we added 2019-2029 employment projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

We used ACS data from respondents with a bachelor's degree in a given major. The data includes respondents who hold only a bachelor's degree, as well as respondents who went on to pursue additional degrees. For example, the data on our biology degree page consists of respondents with a bachelor's degree in biology. Some of the respondents have an additional master's degree, doctoral degree, or other degree in biology or another field.

Most Popular

To find the most popular careers for each major, we ranked jobs based on how common they were in a particular major's data sample relative to the sample of all respondents with a bachelor's degree or higher. We also used editorial judgement to remove jobs that are common in the population but may not be relevant to an individual's pursuit of a bachelor's degree, such as server and manual laborer jobs. Only degree/career combinations with at least 10 respondents were considered.

Highest Earning and Fastest Growing

Our lists of the highest earning and fastest growing careers for each major were limited to careers that were more prevalent than average for a particular major.

The list of highest earning jobs for each major was ranked based on average salary from the ACS. The annual salary for a particular career is not the same across majors and instead reflects the average of the salaries reported by survey respondents with both the career and major indicated. This means, for instance, that there can be a substantial gap between the average annual salary indicated for a Human Resources Worker as reported by an English major versus a Business major.

The list of fastest growing jobs was ranked based on largest projected 2019-2029 growth from BLS employment projections.