Figure

III-04a: Unemployment among Holders of a Terminal Bachelor’s Degree, by Gender and Field of Degree, 2018

* People are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the previous four weeks, and are currently available for work. For an inventory of the particular degree programs included under each of the broad academic fields to which the graph refers, see the ACS-HI Crosswalk.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2018 American Community Survey Public-Use Microdata Sample. Data analyzed and presented by the American Academy of Arts Sciences’ Humanities Indicators (www.humanitiesindicators.org).

The information presented here on unemployment among degree holders in the humanities and other major academic fields is based on an original analysis by the Humanities Indicators of data from the American Community Survey (ACS), which has been administered by the U.S. Census Bureau since 2005. The ACS replaced the “long form” version of the decennial census and collects information—used to allocate billions in state and federal funding—about Americans’ personal characteristics, family composition, employment, income, and housing.

The ACS-based unemployment estimates presented here diverge from the better-known monthly unemployment figures based on the Current Population Survey (which is jointly sponsored by the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS]) because of differences between the two surveys in content, population sample, and data collection method. (For additional information, see the BLS’ “American Community Survey Questions and Answers” at http://www.bls.gov/lau/acsqa.htm.)

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