Does Your Major Matter? What Career Data Shows

The honest answer is: it depends on the career. For some careers, your major is close to a requirement. For many others, employers accept graduates from a wide range of majors and care more about skills and experience. This guide uses U.S. government data to show where the line falls.

When your major matters a lot

Your major matters most when a career requires a license, and the license requires a specific program. Some examples from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook:

• Nursing. Registered nurses need a bachelor's degree, an associate's degree or a diploma from an approved nursing program, must pass a qualifying exam, and need a license from the state where they work (BLS).
• Teaching. All states require public school teachers to be licensed or certified for the grade level they teach. People with a degree in another subject can still qualify through an alternative route to certification (BLS).
• Accounting. Accountants who file reports with the SEC must be licensed CPAs, and all states require CPA candidates to complete 150 semester hours of college coursework (BLS).

Other fields with tight links between major and job include engineering, many health technology careers (such as radiation therapy or dental hygiene) and most careers that need a graduate professional degree. If you want one of these careers, choose the major or program it requires, or plan for a second degree or an alternative route.

When your major matters less

Many careers are open to graduates from many majors. In the U.S. Department of Education's crosswalk, which links college majors to the careers they prepare students for, 202 careers are linked to 10 or more different majors. Some of the most common:

Registered nursing appears here because the crosswalk counts every nursing specialty program as its own major. All of them are still nursing programs, which is why nursing belongs in the first group above.

For the others, the list of majors is genuinely broad. The 35 majors linked to data scientists span statistics, computer science, mathematics, economics, business analytics and computational biology. In careers like these, what you can do (the tools you know, the projects you have built, the problems you have solved) often counts as much as the title of your degree.

Majors that lead to the most careers

If you want to keep your options open, some majors are linked to far more careers than others. In the same crosswalk, the majors linked to the most careers with full data on this site are:

Source: CIP 2020 to SOC 2018 crosswalk; our count.

A broad major is not automatically better. It gives you more possible destinations, but employers in each of those careers will still look for specific skills and experience. Students in broad majors get the most out of them when they choose a direction by their third year and use electives, internships and projects to point toward it. By contrast, the typical major is linked to just 3 careers, and about 1 in 5 is linked to only one.

Does having a degree matter?

Separate "which major" from "whether a degree". Both matter, in different ways.

In O*NET, workers in each career report the education their job requires. Grouping careers by the level most workers report:

Source: O*NET 31.0 education data and BLS OEWS May 2025 employment; careers with their own BLS figure for the job share. Our calculation.

Most U.S. jobs are in careers where a degree is not the most common requirement. But pay rises with the level: the middle career in the bachelor's group has a median pay of $80,390, compared with $48,075 for the high school group. So a degree tends to matter for pay, while the specific major matters most for licensed and technical careers.

How to make any major work harder for you

Whatever you study, a few things make your major more useful in the job market:

• Pair a broad major with specific skills. A history major who learns data analysis, or a biology major who learns programming, can compete for roles far outside their department.
• Get experience before you graduate. Internships, research projects, part-time jobs and campus roles give you examples to put on a resume.
• Build transferable skills. Judgment and decision making and complex problem solving are rated important in about a third of all 875 careers on this site. See the full list of transferable skills.
• Use a minor strategically. A minor in a practical field (business, statistics, computer science, a language) widens the careers your degree points to.

What if you already chose "the wrong" major?

Usually you have more options than it feels like:

1. Look at the careers linked to your major, not just the obvious one. Many majors link to several careers.
2. Check careers that take many majors, like the ones in the table above.
3. Add a short credential (a certificate or a few courses) rather than a second degree, where the target career allows it.
4. Consider a graduate program only when the target career requires it.

If you are still in college, read should I change my major. If you have graduated and want a different path, our Career Change Tool shows which careers match the job you have now.

The bottom line

• Major matters a lot for licensed careers such as nursing, teaching, accounting and engineering, and for many health technology jobs.
• Major matters less for broad professional careers like data science, management analysis, marketing and operations management, where 15 to 35 majors lead to the same job.
• A degree itself is linked to higher typical pay, but most U.S. jobs are in careers that do not usually require one.

To find majors that fit your interests, take the College Major Quiz or read how to choose a major.

Sources

• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Registered Nurses; Kindergarten and Elementary School Teachers; Accountants and Auditors.
• U.S. Department of Education, CIP 2020 to SOC 2018 crosswalk.
• O*NET 31.0 Database (education), U.S. Department of Labor.
• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (pay and employment).