Earnings of Humanities Majors with an Advanced Degree
- In 2021, 42% of humanities majors possessed at least one advanced degree (see the supplemental table). Median annual full-time earnings for humanities majors holding an advanced degree in any field were $87K, compared to $93K for advanced degree holders generally (Indicator III-07a).1supplemental table.
- Male humanities advanced degree holders (ADHs) had annual median earnings of $98K, compared to $79K among their female counterparts. The median earnings for male ADHs who had majored in the humanities were most similar to those of behavioral/social science majors who obtained an advanced degree, though these workers’ median earnings were still $10K higher. The median earnings of male humanities ADHs were 75% of those of male engineering ADHs, the highest-earning group, and 91% of the median earnings of all male ADHs.
- Female humanities ADHs made 70% of what female engineering ADHs did (engineering majors were the top earners among women), but their median earnings were virtually the same as for all female ADHs considered together. The median earnings of female ADHs with humanities degrees were most similar to those of female behavioral/social sciences majors who later earned advanced degrees.
- The gender earnings gap for humanities ADHs was 19%, compared to 26% among ADHs generally (Indicator III-07b). The gap was smaller than that found among business majors, as well as majors in the behavioral/social, life, and physical sciences. The disparity was larger than among arts, education, and health/medical sciences majors with an advanced degree. (In keeping with the practice of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the gap was calculated by dividing the difference between men’s and women’s median earnings by men’s median earnings.)
- Looking at both genders together, the boost in median earnings for humanities majors who obtained an advanced degree was 36% (Indicator III-07c). The boost for humanities majors was somewhat higher for men (36%) than for women (33%). For women, the boost was close in magnitude to that for all fields combined (30%), though that masks wide variation among the fields. For men, the boost for humanities majors was five percentage points greater than for all ADHs. The earnings boost experienced by women was most comparable to ADHs in the health/medical sciences. For male humanities ADHs, the field with the most comparable boost was education.
- For each gender, the boost in earnings from an advanced degree for humanities majors was considerably lower than that for life sciences majors, the group of ADHs that realized the greatest monetary boost, in percentage terms, from their advanced degrees (77% for men; 64% for women).
* Full-time workers are those who worked 35 or more hours per week for 50 or more weeks in the previous 12 months. Advanced degree may be in any field. Fields are arranged in descending order of earnings for all full-time workers.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2021 American Community Survey Public-Use Microdata Sample. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).
For the purposes of the American Community Survey (ACS), the source of these data, the U.S. Census Bureau defines earnings as “the sum of wage or salary income and net income from self-employment. ‘Earnings’ represent the amount of income received regularly for people 16 years old and over before deductions for personal income taxes, Social Security, bond purchases, union dues, Medicare deductions, etc. An individual with earnings is one who has either wage/salary income or self-employment income, or both. Respondents who ‘break even’ in self-employment income and therefore have zero self-employment earnings also are considered ‘individuals with earnings’” (from ACS documentation provided at http://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/subject_definitions /2014_ACSSubjectDefinitions.pdf, p. 83).
The ACS permits respondents to specify up to two fields of bachelor’s degree. For the purposes of this analysis, an individual was counted as having a bachelor’s degree in the humanities if the field of either reported degree was within the scope of the humanities as specified by the HI. For an inventory of the specific fields included under the broad field groupings used here, see the ACS-HI Crosswalk.
Quartiles are statistics that divide the observations of a numeric sample into four groups, each of which contains 25% of the data. The lower, middle, and upper quartiles are computed by ordering the values for a particular variable (earnings, in this case) from smallest to largest and then finding the values below which fall 25%, 50%, and 75% of the data. The middle quartile is also known as the median.
In its analyses of the earnings of humanities majors and how they compare to majors in other fields, the HI always reports the median rather than the mean (“average”). This is necessary due to the highly skewed nature of the U.S. earnings distribution; that is, a small share of the U.S. population earns considerably more than the vast majority of Americans. The mean is very sensitive to such extreme values. The median is far less so and is thus a better measure of “typical” earnings.
* The earnings gap is the difference between male and female median annual earnings expressed as a percentage of male median earnings. Full-time workers are those who worked 35 or more hours per week for 50 or more weeks in the previous 12 months. Advanced degree may be in any field.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2021 American Community Survey Public-Use Microdata Sample. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).
For the purposes of the American Community Survey (ACS), the source of these data, the U.S. Census Bureau defines earnings as “the sum of wage or salary income and net income from self-employment. ‘Earnings’ represent the amount of income received regularly for people 16 years old and over before deductions for personal income taxes, Social Security, bond purchases, union dues, Medicare deductions, etc. An individual with earnings is one who has either wage/salary income or self-employment income, or both. Respondents who ‘break even’ in self-employment income and therefore have zero self-employment earnings also are considered ‘individuals with earnings’” (from ACS documentation provided at http://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/subject_definitions /2014_ACSSubjectDefinitions.pdf, p. 83).
The ACS permits respondents to specify up to two fields of bachelor’s degree. For the purposes of this analysis, an individual was counted as having a bachelor’s degree in the humanities if the field of either reported degree was within the scope of the humanities as specified by the HI. For an inventory of the specific fields included under the broad field groupings used here, see the ACS-HI Crosswalk.
Quartiles are statistics that divide the observations of a numeric sample into four groups, each of which contains 25% of the data. The lower, middle, and upper quartiles are computed by ordering the values for a particular variable (earnings, in this case) from smallest to largest and then finding the values below which fall 25%, 50%, and 75% of the data. The middle quartile is also known as the median.
In its analyses of the earnings of humanities majors and how they compare to majors in other fields, the HI always reports the median rather than the mean (“average”). This is necessary due to the highly skewed nature of the U.S. earnings distribution; that is, a small share of the U.S. population earns considerably more than the vast majority of Americans. The mean is very sensitive to such extreme values. The median is far less so and is thus a better measure of “typical” earnings.
* For full-time workers; that is, those who worked 35 or more hours per week for 50 or more weeks in the previous 12 months. Advanced degree may be in any field. Fields are arranged in descending order of the boost for all full-time workers. The “boost” is calculated as a proportion of terminal bachelor’s degree holders’ earnings.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2021 American Community Survey Public-Use Microdata Sample. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).
For the purposes of the American Community Survey (ACS), the source of these data, the U.S. Census Bureau defines earnings as “the sum of wage or salary income and net income from self-employment. ‘Earnings’ represent the amount of income received regularly for people 16 years old and over before deductions for personal income taxes, Social Security, bond purchases, union dues, Medicare deductions, etc. An individual with earnings is one who has either wage/salary income or self-employment income, or both. Respondents who ‘break even’ in self-employment income and therefore have zero self-employment earnings also are considered ‘individuals with earnings’” (from ACS documentation provided at http://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/subject_definitions /2014_ACSSubjectDefinitions.pdf, p. 83).
The ACS permits respondents to specify up to two fields of bachelor’s degree. For the purposes of this analysis, an individual was counted as having a bachelor’s degree in the humanities if the field of either reported degree was within the scope of the humanities as specified by the HI. For an inventory of the specific fields included under the broad field groupings used here, see the ACS-HI Crosswalk.
Quartiles are statistics that divide the observations of a numeric sample into four groups, each of which contains 25% of the data. The lower, middle, and upper quartiles are computed by ordering the values for a particular variable (earnings, in this case) from smallest to largest and then finding the values below which fall 25%, 50%, and 75% of the data. The middle quartile is also known as the median.
In its analyses of the earnings of humanities majors and how they compare to majors in other fields, the HI always reports the median rather than the mean (“average”). This is necessary due to the highly skewed nature of the U.S. earnings distribution; that is, a small share of the U.S. population earns considerably more than the vast majority of Americans. The mean is very sensitive to such extreme values. The median is far less so and is thus a better measure of “typical” earnings.
