Another Salary Report

From Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce comes another salary report by undergraduate major. No serious surprises here, but I do like their methodology. The CEW breaks down earnings by both occupation and field of study, since in many cases a major in college is not vocational. For example:

However, most majors lead to broad sets of occupations. The underlying data suggests
that this is one explanation of earnings variation. For instance:

Physics majors can be found in

  • Computer occupations (19 percent),  
    Management occupations (19 percent),
    Engineering occupations (14 percent)
    and Sales occupations (9 percent).
  • Also interesting, but not surprising, among the top ten majors with the biggest difference between 25th and 75th percentile earnings:

    Physics  25th $38,000  75th $105,000  Median $67,000