The College Majors Most Likely to Get You Hired—In Your Field and Beyond
Choosing a college major has always been a high-stakes decision, influenced by personal passions, natural talents, and the promise of a lucrative starting salary. Historically, the math was simple: engineering and computer science graduates out-earn English majors.
But in today’s labor market, the calculus has changed. With hiring slowing across the board, artificial intelligence rapidly reshaping industries, and once-booming sectors cooling off, young professionals need to ask themselves a new, critical question: How many different career paths can I actually take with my degree?
According to new LinkedIn data provided exclusively to Forbes, the key to navigating today’s uneven job market isn't just about picking a high-paying major—it’s about picking a versatile one.
With overall hiring down 20% from pre-pandemic levels and 5% from last year, LinkedIn analyzed the 20 most common bachelor's majors on its platform. They looked at recent graduates (classes of 2022–2024) who were employed full-time by the May following their graduation, evaluating them on two crucial metrics: hireability (the health of the industries traditionally tied to the major) and versatility (the ability to pivot into other sectors).
The findings reveal a striking irony. Graduates with degrees in the social sciences and humanities are proving to be highly resilient because their skills translate across multiple industries. Meanwhile, engineering graduates—who likely chose their major expecting a safe, lucrative career—are facing a dual threat: a weak traditional hiring market and highly specialized skills that don't easily transfer to other sectors.
In today’s sluggish job market, LinkedIn’s data suggests that versatility is a new graduate's greatest competitive advantage.
Hireability: Healthcare Booms, Engineering Stalls
To measure hireability, LinkedIn compared April 2026 hiring conditions to pre-pandemic levels in December 2019, focusing specifically on the industries where each major’s graduates traditionally work.
While entry-level hiring is down across the board, healthcare majors enjoy the strongest conditions. Driven by an aging population and the industry's relative immunity to AI automation, healthcare is booming. Last month alone, the sector added 35,000 jobs, making it one of the top three industries for job growth, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The month prior, healthcare led the economy with 37,000 new jobs.
Engineering majors, conversely, face the weakest hiring conditions, with traditional hiring down 25% since December 2019. Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s Head of Economics for the Americas, explains that roughly 75% of engineering graduates funnel into manufacturing, professional services, construction, and tech. Many of these sectors have significantly slowed down. Technology, in particular, has seen massive bleeding; according to the latest Challenger, Gray & Christmas jobs report, tech leads the nation in layoffs with 123,653 announced cuts this year—a 66% increase from the same time last year, with AI frequently cited as the primary driver.
Versatility: The Humanities’ "Sweet Spot"
To measure versatility, LinkedIn calculated the share of graduates working outside of their major’s top two traditional industries.
Unsurprisingly, engineering majors struggle to pivot, with just 41% finding work outside their core sectors. Healthcare also boasts the lowest versatility rate of all the top majors. However, Kantenga notes that because healthcare hiring is so robust, its graduates simply don't need to look for work in other fields.
The real winners in the versatility category are young professionals with social sciences and humanities degrees. Kantenga describes them as being in a "sweet spot" in today’s labor market. Even if they cannot land a job in their desired field, over 60% successfully find work in other industries.
“If you look at the first couple of industries for them, it’s professional services, which is running slow, and financial services, which has also been a bit slow," Kantenga says. "But in a low-hire market where the chance of finding a job in those traditional fields is down, more than half of social science majors are actually finding opportunities elsewhere.”
Kantenga points to English majors as a prime example, noting that 69% have found jobs outside their traditional industries. As AI automates routine technical tasks, distinctly human skills—like complex communication, empathy, and relationship-building—are becoming increasingly vital.
“When I was in college, it was always this running joke that English majors would be unemployed," Kantenga says. "It turns out that communication is actually an essential skill for so many jobs that a lot of folks do not have. At the moment, that major offers a lot of versatility, allowing them to capture hiring momentum coming from entirely different industries.”
How to Navigate a Slow Job Market
For recent graduates facing a tough employment landscape, Kantenga offers three strategic pieces of advice:
1. Follow the momentum
Research where opportunities are growing and where they are shrinking, then tailor your search accordingly. "Understand where there's momentum in the labor market and be open to considering other areas you may not have before," Kantenga advises. For example, if you are a software engineer aiming for tech, remember that tech hiring is 20% to 30% slower than pre-pandemic levels. Instead, look at industries with momentum, like healthcare or construction. They may not be hiring massive volumes of software engineers, but the opportunities are there, and fewer candidates are looking.
2. Leverage your network.
In an uneven job market, tapping into your network is critical for opening doors and securing referrals. “My mom always taught me it's not what you know, but who you know," Kantenga says. "And that is especially important in a tough labor market.”
3. Show, don't just tell.
Beyond knowing the right people, you must know how to showcase your actual capabilities. This means going beyond a standard resume: list your specific skills on your profile, link to your portfolio, and provide tangible proof of your work.
“It shouldn’t just be, ‘Yes, I can do this, and yes, I can do that,’” Kantenga says. “You need to actually have demonstrables for what you’re capable of so employers can check them out and decide whether you’re a match, as opposed to having an employer guess in the dark.”