January 12th, 2018 | Updated on April 11th, 2024
Coming out of college and finding a job quickly may feel like an unrealistic dream. After all, only around 20% of students are offered positions right before or after graduation. Even after getting hired, those starting salaries were never met with excitement, that is, until now.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this year college graduates will be earning the highest average base salary since 2007, a healthy $49,785! This number is a 3% increase from last year (accounting for inflation), and that should make first-year employees scream for joy! This study was done through the Korn Ferry reports by analyzing 145,000 entry level positions from over 700 different companies.
Though this doesn’t account for all fields of occupation, 25 different positions were studied.
Taking a look at STEM (science, engineering, tech, math) positions, students graduating from these fields might as well start dancing on top of tables.
For all those hard working programmers out there, first year software developers are projected to earn around $65,232.
Alongside them, engineers and actuaries are looking to be making around $63,036, and $59,212 respectively.
Even at the bottom of the spectrum, customer service representatives are still looking at a decent $35,848!
For graduates living in places such as New York, San Francisco and Boston, your ROI for earning that college degree will be on top of the totem pole.
Compared to other cities such as Los Angeles and Atlanta, starting salaries for those citizens will be considerably higher… It’s ok though, rent is expensive as hell anyway!
In terms of other careers, medicinal, judicial and IT fields are the ones that are expected to have the best growth over the next foreseeable future.
Medicinal Research Labs, Law Firms and EssayPro are offering top compensation for entry level workers, with lots of room for salary growth.
So if you aren’t sure what to study at university, there’s three great majors to pursue… just don’t do jazz history, please.
For all other students pursuing their major, don’t get discouraged. The class of 2017 did absolutely NOTHING special to see these kind of numbers, they just kind of got lucky. After all, how else would you classify entering the job market at its peak position in the last decade; and don’t say anything about predicting the future…
So, to all the graduates entering the workforce, there is just one thing to say; don’t throw away your good fortune on stupid things and you’ll be just fine. Oh, and try not to get fired either.
