17 Worst-Paying College Majors: 2023

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The last couple of years has been a job-seeker’s market, with the unemployment rate for recent college graduates — those ages 22 to 27 — sitting at 4.1% at the end of 2022. The rate of underemployment for this group was down as well, to 38.1%, according to recent research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. But having a job is one thing; having a job in your chosen field that pays well is another.

New York Fed’s research includes a list of college majors whose median early-career wage is $50,000 and median midcareer wage is $75,000. The results show a wide discrepancy between the best- and worst-paying majors. Engineering careers tend to be well remunerated by midcareer, while careers in education, unfortunately, are much less so.

In the gallery, we list the 17 worst-paying majors by median wages for midcareer employees, ages 35 to 45. In order to showcase more fields, we grouped five different education careers together as a single “major” on our list, presenting their early-career and mid-career salaries as a range.

Following is a breakdown of each education field’s median wages.

Salaries in Education, by Field

Specialty
Median early-career wage
Median midcareer wage

Early Childhood
$40,000
$43,000

Elementary
$40,000
$48,000

General
$40,200
$51,000

Secondary
$40,400
$52,000

Special
$40,000
$52,000

The New York Fed collected 2022 data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Click through the gallery for the lowest-paying college majors at midcareer, according to the bank’s research. When possible, ties were broken by early-career salaries.

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