News: Companies Are Hiring More English Majors

From the Wall Street Journal:

Companies Are Hiring More English Majors

Heads up, business majors: Employers are newly hot on the trail of hires with liberal arts and humanities degrees.

Class of 2015 graduates from those disciplines are employed at higher rates than their cohorts in the class of 2014, and starting salaries rose significantly, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ annual first-destination survey of recent graduates in the workforce.

Degree holders in area studies — majors such as Latin American Studies and Gender Studies — logged the largest gains in full-time employment and pay, with average starting salaries rising 26% to $43,524 for the class of 2015, compared with the previous year’s graduates. Language studies posted the second-highest salary gains.

Though area studies majors comprise less than 1% of all graduates in the survey, the pay numbers show employers are seeking hires with communication skills and comfort in multicultural environments, said Edwin Koc, NACE’s director of research, public policy and legislative affairs.

NACE collected employment and salary information from 279 U.S. colleges and universities and 244,000 bachelor’s degree graduates.