Percentage and Number of Workers with a Humanities Bachelor’s Degree, by Occupation, 2015

Approximately five million people employed in management and professional jobs in 2015 had bachelor’s degrees in the humanities. More than a million humanities graduates were employed as managers, and 1.3 million graduates from the field were employed in education positions (at the secondary and postsecondary level). The next largest areas of employment for holders of humanities bachelor’s degrees were office and administrative support positions (with 754,000 employees) and sales (with 696,000).1

The numbers do not fully account for the role humanities majors play in each field, however, as they account for more than 10% of the people employed in every occupational category except those that are specifically STEM-related (where they account for almost 5% of employees in science, engineering, and healthcare, and 7% of employees in the computer occupations).

Endnotes

• 1U.S. Census Bureau, 2015 American Community Survey Public-Use Microdata Sample.