Which college majors earn the highest salaries?

Ididio Explores

Discover some less-known majors with great unemployment figures and inspiring bachelor’s-only salaries!

Ididio’s program explorer is always available to help you find a bachelor’s degree program that meets your requirements.

As we explored salaries and unemployment data by major, we discovered some lucrative fields that were completely off our radar. For sure, choosing a college major is about a lot more than money, and earning a high income does not depend entirely on your degree. Nonetheless, we hope this list might inspire a little exploration!

Select any row in the table below to explore detailed program pages on Ididio.

Explore college majors

Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Administration

Metallurgical Engineering

Nuclear and Industrial Radiology Technologies

Petroleum Engineering

Electrical Engineering

Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering

Computer Engineering

Chemical Engineering

Mining and Mineral Engineering

Computer Science

Mechanical Engineering

SOURCES:

2017 ACS microdata

2018 IPEDS

Companion story

In a separate story, we examine the likelihood that a given major will propel you into career that pays above the typical salary for college graduates, as well as the percentage of majors who earned a graduate degree after college. This is a slightly more complex take on anticipated outcomes by college major.

Methodology

Most data in this story was aggregated from person-level survey responses to the American Community Survey administered from 2014 to 2018. Respondents provide their annual salary, college major (if applicable), occupation, highest level of education attained, and employment status, as well as a great deal more, allowing us to pool data by one or more attribute and share the information shown in the table.

The completion totals as well as award level are from IPEDS completions data, which was released in July 2020 for the 2018-2019 academic year.