These Students Are Making Even More Than They Expect After Graduation
College students who major in STEM fields generally know that they can make more money than their peers once they graduate, but they don’t know how much more.
Turns out, those students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math, actually have starting salaries that are higher than expected, according to a new report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Engineering majors, for example, expect to earn $56,000, but actually receive 15.5 percent more than that, with starting salaries average nearly $65,000. Computer Science majors expect to make around $51,000, but receive 22 percent for an average starting salary of $62,000.
Chemistry majors have the largest gap between expectations and reality: They expect to earn an average of $39,000 but take home an average $58,000 in their first year, a 51 percent increase.
Related: The Closing of the Millennial Mind on Campus
The typical college graduate in 2014 received a starting salary of $48,000. Liberal arts and humanities majors had the lowest starting salary, with an average of just $39,000, according to NACE.
Not only do STEM majors enjoy higher salaries, but they can also expect more job security and better job prospects. All of the top 25 jobs recently compiled by U.S. News and World Report fell into either a science- or math-based discipline.
Still, not everyone has the interest or aptitude to excel in a STEM career. A third of those who begin their college career majoring in those fields end up transferring to a difference study area, according to a recent report by RTI International.
Number of the Day: $132,900
The cap on Social Security payroll taxes will rise to $132,900 next year, an increase of 3.5 percent. (Earnings up to that level are subject to the Social Security tax.) The increase will affect about 11.6 million workers, Politico reports. Beneficiaries are also getting a boost, with a 2.8 percent cost-of-living increase coming in 2019.
Photo of the Day: Kanye West at the White House
This is 2018: Kanye West visited President Trump at the White House Thursday and made a rambling 10-minute statement that aired on TV news networks. West’s lunch with the president was supposed to focus on clemency, crime in his hometown of Chicago and economic investment in urban areas, but his Oval Office rant veered into the bizarre. And since this is the world we live in, we’ll also point out that West apparently became “the first person to ever publicly say 'mother-f***er' in the Oval Office.”
Trump called Kanye’s monologue “pretty impressive.”
“That was bonkers,” MSNBC’s Ali Velshi said afterward.
Again, this is 2018.
Chart of the Day: GDP Growth Before and After the Tax Bill
President Trump and the rest of the GOP are celebrating the recent burst in economic growth in the wake of the tax cuts, with the president claiming that it’s unprecedented and defies what the experts were predicting just a year ago. But Rex Nutting of MarketWatch points out that elevated growth rates over a few quarters have been seen plenty of times in recent years, and the extra growth generated by the Republican tax cuts was predicted by most economists, including those at the Congressional Budget Office, whose revised projections are shown below.
Are States Ready for the Next Downturn?
The Great Recession hit state budgets hard, but nearly half are now prepared to weather the next modest downturn. Moody’s Analytics says that 23 states have enough reserves to meet budget shortfalls in a moderate economic contraction, up from just 16 last year, Bloomberg reports. Another 10 states are close. The map below shows which states are within 1 percent of their funding needs for their rainy day funds (in green) and which states are falling short.
Chart of the Day: Evolving Price of the F-35
The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act signed in August included 77 F-35 Lightning II jets for the Defense Department, but Congress decided to bump up that number in the defense spending bill finalized this week, for a total of 93 in the next fiscal year – 16 more than requested by the Pentagon. Here’s a look from Forbes at the evolving per unit cost of the stealth jet, which is expected to eventually fall to roughly $80 million when full-rate production begins in the next few years.
