Graphic Design being low demand has always confused me.
Graphic design is really hard to do well, and there’s a ton of legitimate need for it. After all, every business needs a logo and a few print ads.
But maybe there’s just not much demand for doing it well?
I could believe that. I’ve seen plenty of small business logos and print ads that were obviously done by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.
Or is there just a massive oversupply because that’s where all the extra art history students retrain?
I’m going to guess it’s not oversupply, because, again, those mom and pop businesses would have decent logos, right?
I dunno… I’m genuinely curious how a trade that’s that hard to get really good at has such high unemployment.
I guess the aerospace degree has the same thing going, according to this chart.
Even if every business got a professional logo , they only need to do it once. And for small places, the budget for getting a logo is maybe a few grand tops. New businesses are created all the time, but is it enough to keep all of the graphic designers busy?
Web stuff needs graphic design also, and movie industry
I would say AI is coming for them - but then I am reminded of all the stories about nightmare clients pestering graphic designers endlessly for nonsense changes. Then I am reminded of Terminator and fear this is why the machines rise up.
Wouldn’t be surprised if there is an oversupply due to it being a popular field people want to get into, due older people loving the work too much to retire, and due to nepotism/favouring of inexperienced friends/kids of friends in the hiring processes.
Because nobody wants to pay for it. “That’s easy, I’ll just do it myself”. Surprisedpikachu when it doesn’t go over as desired, but they saved a couple bucks.
These numbers seem wrong. we struggle to get aerospace enginners, physics etc. and the graphic art people are needed for web and movie industry. Maybe this is just graduatee degree vs somebody doing a second major and finding another career?
While everyone needs graphic design work I can’t imagine everyone needs a steady supply of it. There’s no maintenance aspect to keep the job going either. A few designers can serve very many customers full time
There are a few industries that require a full-time graphic designer. It’s usually underpaid and overworked but they exist.
The companies are usually flip-flopping from doing it in-house to contracting it out. Usually every 4-5 years when a new executive parasite comes along. So lots of career uncertainty for most graphic designers.
It also doesn’t help the industry that for decades, predatory schools have been pushing out “graphical designers” as an easy fast degree. This has saturated the job market with lots of poorly trained people producing crap work.
Anecdotal, my former room mate is a Graphics Designer. They are fairly successful now, but have been struggling with their business for a decade before they got where they are. And still have tremendous debt to pay off (both business and school). They work twelve hours a day. Often works on the weekend as well. Plus they have a teaching gig now at heir former college. Along with the occasional exhibition for their art.
They’ve burnt out at least twice along the way. Both times it has cost them their relationship. But I have tremendous respect for them for doing the level of hustle that you’d expect from a wallstreet stockbroker on speed or coke.
“Underemployment is when workers are working less than full-time” that’s such a shitty reference, I’ll take every opportunity to NOT work 40 hours a week even if it means getting by with less money. Let me experience life a little, goddamn
Dumbass me saw “unemployment” and “underemployment”, and went “huh? un-de-re-mployment? what’s that?? that’s a lot of prefixes”. Turns out it’s just under-employment
That’s kinda like how “underbed” was for me; like, how do you underb something? Or derb it in the first place, for that matter?
Un-redeployment. When you put boots on the ground, but it’s not a war
Under-redeployment. When you don’t put enough boots on the ground and it’s still not a war.
Why aerospace engineering? Is it because people want more mechanical engineering instead and not something so niche?
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It’s the equivalent of “become a Hollywood superstar” for engineering specialties. Lots of grads chasing relatively few positions in the industry – many will ultimately take positions working in related engineering fields like mechanical or automotive engineering, but at the end of the day the aerospace sector just doesn’t develop enough new products to employ all the grads coming out of school with a degree.
Tied to govt contracts. I know lots of ppl that got laid off in 2008. I dk about now.
Boeing fired them all so there is an oversupply of them in the market
Joking, maybe…idk
But space engineering should be booming right now, I’m surprised to see that as well. My specific degree is in aviation fields and I’m surprised it’s not on here. No one I know is using theirs.
Wouldn’t the engineering for space fall outside of aeronautics? There would be overlap if a craft is meant to enter and exit the atmosphere, but it seems like a trade that would require a large set of disciplines to do properly.
You’re right, but aerospace engineering is a very broad term, afaik, with many disciplines. Many do overlap between aviation and space flight, but I don’t really know if, hypothetically, a Boeing engineer could go work for spaceX, it would depend on the role I imagine.
I see “aerospace engineering” and the Boeing quakity issues just fall into place.
Surprised to not see computer tech majors on here. I have a degree in IT and have to compete with people more experienced than me for jobs that pay a dollar or two an hour more than retail jobs. I’m going for a degree in computer engineering now but I’m starting to doubt if this is a good path.
I have a degree in IT and have to compete with people more experienced than me for jobs that pay a dollar or two an hour more than retail jobs
In my experience the places paying barely more than retail wages are not hiring people with extensive resumes but mostly hiring people straight out of college. Places paying ~$20+ are where you’re probably competing with more experienced folks
Make sure you’re on LinkedIn, and also don’t discount uploading your resume to Indeed and marking yourself as looking for work on both. For as long as I’ve been working in the industry I’ve had recruiters contacting me on both platforms with various opportunities for contracts and employment.
Also work with your college/university and your instructors to be referred for openings. Often employers will reach out to colleges with IT programs when there’s openings in IT
Yeah IT specifically is pretty rough. Part of the challenge is that for pretty much every company it’s considered a cost center that they want to do everything in their power to minimize, rather than an important part of their business (obviously some exceptions apply, e.g, the company provides IT services to other companies as a service offering).
Assuming you want to go into software/hardware development of some kind, computer engineering should be a solid bet, I wouldn’t worry.
It’s either not considered a major or it’s a part of the Liberal Arts degree path, like most math and science courses before specialization often are. Sometimes degrees for specific professions and technical training require a major, but they themselves are not majors in the USA.
A big part of this is lack of centralization. The federal government requires schools to have federally accredited coursework for tax purposes, and the accrediting process is done by several non-public entities, beyond that they can technically structure their courses, credits, and degree paths however they like.
For example, Physics and Aerospace Engineering require Liberal Arts majors like math and science as prerequisites, and the same is true for Commercial Art and Graphic Design’s relationship to Fine Arts majors.
I am having a hard time believing someone would group Computer Science & Computer Engineering with Liberal Art.
It’s also possible these computer tech majors are not as badly unemployed as the other ones. I noticed that while the chart includes the underemployment rate, it doesn’t sort by it.
It sorts by unemployment on the left side of the line, it’s just that the underemployment on the right is a much larger graph.
Yeah, well, what I’m trying to say is that the tech majors might have huge underemployment, but don’t make the cut to this chart due to not that many who are completely unemployed.
IMO, it’s a lack of diversity in the computer science field as a major.
Everyone I know who has gone to university for a computer related program has been taking development/programming.
Certainly programming is important in computer science, but there’s substantially more disciplines in computer science than development. Any courses in computer science that are not development are few and far between. With the volume of CS programs being so small, can you really be surprised that it didn’t make the list?
As related as they are, though, CS and IT are still separate disciplines so idk, as much as some CS people are struggling to find work too, I feels like CS people specializing in development isn’t super relevant to the struggles of an IT person looking for IT work since only a minority of IT grads go on to become developers.
Although one way that CS specializations can affect the IT world, anecdotally at least, is that I noticed at least where I am locally that fresh CS grads are preferred over fresh IT grads for IT roles, and often better paying ones. But more experience plus having the right certifications can give anyone an edge on either side.
To be clear, I don’t disagree with what you said just wasn’t sure how it relates to IT.
Where I’m from IT is usually a 2 year diploma at a vocational college, or at most an associate’s degree and there wouldn’t really be a path to further that academically by doing, like, a master’s degree or whatever which limits the options of IT grads but also makes them less desirable I guess as the education isn’t as rigorous.
Why is physics on this list? Seems a bit of of place
I majored in physics, even living in a country with a ton of technology companies. There are only so many research labs, and only very few companies want dedicated physics people. Often they just want to run a mechanical simulation known as FEM, they hire mechanical engineers for it.
Also, physics is very broad. While companies are usually looking into a specific topic. If you didnt happen to stumble in the right area of physics you might not have valuable knowledge for a company. Often a Physics education is not even focused on deepening a specific topic, but more on how to solve complex problems. In my opinion that can be applied to many problems we face today, if given the chance.
Physics education is based on the idea of a renaissance man, one who knows how everything works. Companies simply don’t care about that.
A lot seems out of place.
Is it useful to know that liberal arts majors are 7.9 unemployed without the larger context of how many liberal arts majors there are?
I might not be explaining myself well, but it feels like there is an error with the chart. Not exactly the same type of write you get from every map of x thing just being another population density map, but the same type of error for not adjusting for that type of thing.
I’m other words, I thought liberal arts was the most common major so I would’ve expected it to be closer to the national average.
The total number of LA holders is irrelevant since everything is presented on a percentage basis. The fact that it isn’t close to the national average is evidence of being different from the overall population.
Although, I suppose an overabundance of LA degree holders could lead to higher unemployment. But that doesn’t change the conclusions that can be drawn from the chart.
Not certain I agree fully with your statement
But that doesn’t change the conclusions that can be drawn from the chart.
Is a liberal arts degree hard to get a job with because of too many people with the degree, or because there isn’t sufficient transferrable skills included in the degree? All we know is that these jobs aren’t best for securing a job after graduation.
I think we agree with each other. The only question the chart answers is whether or not these degree holders experience higher underemployment than the overall population. The question of why is irrelevant to this chart.
I was trying to disagree with the OPs skepticism that the chart is somehow misleading because it ignores the number of LA degree holder.
How many physicists do you know? There are only so many research labs out there. The physics majors probably do better than w art history majors because they can often pivot to something like software development.
Seems like “Business” and “Communications” degrees should be included.
You’d think people with engineering degrees would have a wide swath of jobs to choose from. Physics is a judge field, and the math is applicable to a lot of things. Same with aerospace. I’d think aerospace people could get jobs in the military or automotive industries. Not just NASA or Boeing.
Because physics graduates have a high unemployment rate compared to other degrees. So how is it out of place? Not all stem degrees are good for getting a job. There aren’t many careers where a physics degree gives you directly marketable skills. You either go into physics research or astronomy research, and you need a phd for both. Most people with a physics degree end up having to spend time specializing in something else.
Why would a company hire an engineer with a physics degree when they can an engineer with an engineering degree? Physics is a very generalist field.
The Liberal Arts being a joke degree holds up.
Only if the only point of college is to get a job.
There’s more to life than work and a good liberal arts degree exposed you to a lot of it.
… It’s not worth 200k of debt but it’s great to learn.
Only if the only point of college is to get a job.
When it comes with that 200K of debt the ONLY point is to get a job. Employers want employees with degrees because degrees come with debt and people who are in debt are less likely to quit a shitty job.
Sounds about right coming from… vlad of 1976
In my mind it’s not so much a joke degree inasmuch as it really relies on the student to have their own plan for employment and the usefulness of the degree.
Some people have connections, ideas, outside the box thinking, or independent wealth.
I need the top ten majors with the lowest unemployment rates to make a judgement in this plot.
I’d be really interested to see the specifics of how that data is collected, but also fucking duh recent college grads are underemployed. Also, having that degree sets people up for career advancement as they gain experience and that educational background becomes even more of a prerequisite for the jobs they’re moving into
If you are employed in a junior job within the field you have been trained in, you are not underemployed.
What this graph shows however, is that there are a ton of degrees that seem to teach hardly any transferable skills. A sociologist without proper statistical training has almost zero value in the business world. And that’s a problem.
What this graph shows however, is that there are a ton of degrees that seem to teach hardly any transferable skills
This graph absolutely does not show this lol…how could you possibly derive that from this graph
And sociologists are absolutely trained in statistics
That’s why I explicitly qualified my statement, because not all sociologists are in fact trained in statistics. Many just had the statistics 101 class and went into the more philosophical part of the trade.
The real question is: what else does this graph show in your interpretation?
How does the graph not show that? The chart clearly shows there are a lot of degrees whose holders have “insufficient jobs for their training.”
I.e., they were unable to find jobs that utilized the skills they got with their degree. The skills are not sufficiently transferable to jobs.
I interpret it as there are more degree holders than there are jobs that closely align with that degree. Graduating art history majors are absolutely qualified to be curators at galleries and museums, but there are only a handful of those positions available.
Any decent sociology program will teach a hefty amount of statistics. That’s the basis of research.
Sometimes that’s the difference between a BA and BS
Sounds like a BA in sociology is a thing that shouldn’t exist.
Maybe the business world is the problem.
Or maybe we just don’t need hundreds of thousands of people trained in liberal arts.
I’m not trying to defend businesses here, but there’s only so many places for people who are trained in over-analyzing paint and clay.
Mathematics is liberal arts. So is economics.
Maybe I’m too European for that, but I was under the impression that this is basically an umbrella term for humanities, art, literature, etc.
I double majored in History of Art and Philosophy for my undergrad.
Surprisingly philosophy led on quite neatly to a career in software development. Especially analytic philosophy is all about breaking down complex problems into premises and a conclusion. Sometimes it’s algorithmic in the sense that premise 4 might refer you back to premise 2.
That’s super interesting to me, any references for a software person who wants to find some overlap with philosophy? I know very little about the subject.
I suppose studying basic formal logic would be a good place to start because that is the place where there is the most overlap. In philosophy an argument can be ‘valid’ by conforming to certain conditions such as
P1: All men are mortal P2: Socrates is a man C: Socrates is mortalThis is an example of deductive reasoning where the form or structure of the argument guarantees the conclusion to be true. Process is called ‘deductive’ reasoning where a conclusion is drawn from the truth of the premises. The ancient Greeks called this a syllogism.
Computer programs are similar in the sense that they are using formal logic with tokens that represent variables to the compiler. Given these arguments exist; we can perform these operations and get a specific result.
As an aside the counterpart to deductive reasoning is inductive reasoning. That’s where the premises may be true but the conclusion might not necessarily follow from them. People throw around the word ‘fallacy’ quite often online but essentially every fallacy is just an example of inductive reasoning where the premises do not guarantee the conclusion. Philosophers study different types of formal fallacies like ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ (because this happens, something else ought to happen) since there are different ways where combinations of premises can lead to an untrustworthy conclusion.
Intriguingly all science is speculative and uses inductive reasoning where we infer from what data we gain in experiments to a conclusion of what might be happening, however there is no logical guarantee that experiment results will be true. There’s even a thesis called pessimistic meta induction which states that: Given all scientific theories we held in the past have been proven false (or refined to a slightly different conclusion), we can safely assume that every scientific theory we currently hold is ‘false’ in some sense.
This is a good introduction to formal logic. It was required reading in my undergrad - https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Paul-Tomassi-Logic.pdf
I find that a bit misleading. Me and my gf both work only 4 days a week (aka not full-time). I’d say it barely makes a difference in our field when we’re tired on Fridays rotting at work or home.
Full time is often defined as 32 hours per week.
Oh I see… In the two countries I worked in it was 40, ok then.
Colloquially it is 40 hours per week but for other purposes its somewhere between 30 and 40. Lot of places the cut off for benefits is 36 hours.
I find it neat that they include Commercial Art and Graphic Design as being separate from Fine Arts majors, and the same for Aerospace Engineering as separate from Liberal Arts or Physics majors.
What is Liberal Arts? There are many majors that could be considered part of the liberal arts, but never seen an actual liberal arts major.
You can major in Liberal Arts at some schools, but many call it General Studies. It’s basically for when you can’t decide on a major.
Physics
Most depressing colleague I ever had was a dude who’d done a masters by research discovering new planets with powerful instruments that detected tiny variations in the light levels in far off solar systems. You could discover new heavenly bodies based off the cadence and degree of occlusion that occurs for that solar system’s star.
Basically this guy was no longer able to progress with astrophysics because the competition for positions/funding was so intense. He’d ended up as a software dev but all he talked about was new planets and he spent every lunch break looking at the raw data from these instruments which were published into the public domain that day.
He had a calling but the world had torn him away from it.
Yeah im terrified that’ll be me oneday. Im also probably gonna get my PhD in either physics or astrophysics
He told me a story of being at an astrophysics conference where the students got instructed to “look to the left” then “look to the right” before being told that only 1 in 10 of them would be able to make a living in that niche.
Yeah
Software isn’t so bad! You at least get a lot of time to cultivate interests/passions in other subjects…
The fate of most academics. After a falling out with my phd advisor, i went a completely different route and managed to build a solid career.
“Where’s yer fancy math now?!”
