The 10 worst-paying college majors, 5 years after graduation

[rcjordan]

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/26/worst-paying-college-majors.html

[ergophobe]

It's always depressing to see primary and secondary education persistently on lists of low-paying professions. It seems pretty easy to make the case that it is one of the most important jobs in society and by many measures there are large shortages AND there are declining enrollments in people choosing education as a major.

In classical economics, a field with high importance, high demand, and low and decreasing supply should be high-paying and yet it never has been in the US.

https://www.epi.org/blog/teacher-shortage-part1/
https://www.devlinpeck.com/content/teacher-shortage-statistics
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/09/27/a-dwindling-number-of-new-u-s-college-graduates-have-a-degree-in-education/

I think part of this is the funding mechanism in the US. I think a lot of it is sexism - teaching, especially K-8, was traditionally a female-dominated profession.

Still...

[littleman]

I read don't know how well paid and primary educators are in the rest of the developed world, it would be interesting to do a comparison.

[ergophobe]

In looking up those links, I came across some older global info.

In general, teachers are not well paid in rich countries. In poor countries it ranges between horrible and very good compared to other professions or as a multiple of per capita GDP. I think in Turkey it was 188X the per capita GDP.

The US was not the worst, but it was near the bottom. Most of the European countries were pretty low compared to engineers or, say, hedge fund managers.