This indicator is based on data collected as part of the National Science Foundation’s National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG). Conducted every two years, the NSCG gathers detailed education, occupation, and earnings information from a sample of individuals drawn from the larger pool of all those identified via the American Community Survey (ACS) as holders of a baccalaureate degree. The Foundation makes NSCG data available to researchers and the general public via downloadable data files and its online data analysis tool, SESTAT.

Given the size of the NSCG sample, reliable estimates are available only for broad academic fields. For the NSCG disciplinary categories included in each of the field-of-degree categories employed by the Humanities Indicators, see the provided crosswalk, which also indicates which types of jobs are included in each of the broad occupational categories used for this analysis.

These occupation-related indicators are based on NSCG data, but similar items included in the Humanities Indicators rely on data from the American Community Survey (ACS). Due to marked differences in how NSCG and ACS classify academic fields and occupations, the contents of the field-of-degree and occupational categories used for this indicator are not identical to those used for the ACS-based indicators III-3c, 3d, and 3l. (For more information on the contents of the categories used for the ACS analysis, see the pertinent crosswalk.)

An even more important difference between these indicators and the ACS-based occupation-related indicators is that the master’s degree recipients considered here are those whose master’s degree was in the humanities (irrespective of the field of their undergraduate degree). The ACS does not collect data about the fields in which advanced degrees were earned. The ACS-based indicators thus describe the occupational distribution of undergraduate humanities majors who went on to pursue advanced degrees, regardless of the field of the advanced degree.

See “Earnings of Humanities Master’s Degree Recipients,” which also draws on the National Survey of College Graduates.

Occupation and earnings information for bachelor’s degree recipients can be found under the topics “Occupations of Humanities Majors with a Terminal Bachelor’s Degree” and “Earnings of Humanities Majors with a Terminal Bachelor's Degree.” (Please note that these indicators, and that relating to unemployment [described below], are based on data from a different source, the American Community Survey, which differs from the National Survey of College Graduates in several key ways. Please click the “About the Data” button below the graph for further explanation.)

For a comparison of unemployment among humanities majors and majors in other fields, see “The Employment Status of Humanities Majors.”

For information on humanities Ph.D.’s, see “Occupations of Humanities Ph.D.’s,” “Earnings of Humanities Ph.D.’s.,” and “Job Status of Humanities Ph.D.’s at Time of Graduation.”

For trends concerning the number and type of master’s degrees conferred over the past 70 years, see “Advanced Degrees in the Humanities” and “Disciplinary Distribution of Advanced Degrees in the Humanities.”