The National Science Foundation has a report Characteristics of Recent Science and Engineering Graduates: 2008
The data is from 2008 but the report is from August 2012 so its the most recent data they have. While its not very new, I doubt the overall trends have changed much other than higher unemployment during the recession.
I'm looking at just the grads with bachelors degrees which is in Table 1 of the report. They also dissect the data other ways looking at gender, ethnicity and other factors.
Here is how it looks graphically with each major broken up by % of graduates who are either still in school (presumably grad school), employed in a science / engineering field, employed in a field other than science/engr. or who are are unemployed:
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I also thought it would be good to highlight the split between grads in each field who are either in school or in their field versus those who are employed in a field that isn't science or engineering or unemployed. That split looks like this :
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The majority of engineering grads and computer science end up in the sciences/engineering fields or back in school. The majority of social sciences end up in other fields or unemployed. The physical science grads are a mix with a higher percent in school again.
At the extremes you can see that 70% of sociology/anthropology majors end up in fields other than science or engineering and 77% of mechanical engineers end up in the science/engineering fields.
Here is the data in table format :
| grads | in school | |
| agricultural/food sciences | 14,000 | 4,000 |
| biological sciences | 147,000 | 68,000 |
| environmental life sciences | 12,000 | 3,000 |
| computer and info sciences | 85,000 | 7,000 |
| math and statistics | 33,000 | 8,000 |
| chemistry | 22,000 | 11,000 |
| earth, atmospheric, ocean | 9,000 | 3,000 |
| physics / astronomy | 10,000 | 5,000 |
| psychology | 184,000 | 54,000 |
| economics | 48,000 | 8,000 |
| political and related | 98,000 | 23,000 |
| sociology / anthropology | 87,000 | 15,000 |
| other social sciences | 59,000 | 12,000 |
| chemical engineering | 8,000 | 2,000 |
| civil | 19,000 | 3,000 |
| electrical/computer | 37,000 | 5,000 |
| industrial | 6,000 | 1,000 |
| mechanical | 30,000 | 4,000 |
| other engineer | 26,000 | 7,000 |
and
| in field | other field | unemployed | |
| agricultural/food sciences | 2,000 | 7,000 | 1,000 |
| biological sciences | 29,000 | 37,000 | 13,000 |
| environmental life sciences | 3,000 | 6,000 | 1,000 |
| computer and info sciences | 57,000 | 17,000 | 4,000 |
| math and statistics | 5,000 | 17,000 | 2,000 |
| chemistry | 5,000 | 5,000 | 1,000 |
| earth, atmospheric, ocean | 3,000 | 4,000 | 1,000 |
| physics / astronomy | 2,000 | 3,000 | * |
| psychology | 15,000 | 98,000 | 16,000 |
| economics | 6,000 | 32,000 | 2,000 |
| political and related | 5,000 | 62,000 | 7,000 |
| sociology / anthropology | 5,000 | 61,000 | 7,000 |
| other social sciences | 6,000 | 36,000 | 6,000 |
| chemical engineering | 5,000 | 1,000 | * |
| civil | 13,000 | 3,000 | 1,000 |
| electrical/computer | 24,000 | 5,000 | 2,000 |
| industrial | 4,000 | 1,000 | * |
| mechanical | 23,000 | 3,000 | * |
| other engineer | 12,000 | 5,000 | 2000 |
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