> My suspicion is that there is a huge difference between graduating as a humanities major in a recession vs boom.
Drop the "humanities major"--it's true even for STEM majors as well. There's a pretty consistent career track from college to junior to senior positions, and if you fall off that track, it is quite hard to get back in again. There are very few majors for which demand is high enough to let you get back on the track, certainly not all of STEM.
CS major graduating in June from a top 3 institution, here. Last fall, my application-to-callback rate was like 80-90+%. I had to stop applying to jobs to make my workload and interviewing manageable.
My current rate is like 15-20% after I lost my full-time job. About 10% in software and engineering vs. 30% in finance.
Most of STEM degrees are not similar to CS regarding career prospects. Masters in chemistry or mathematics don't have that many entry level jobs with attractive salaries eagerly waiting for fresh grads.
Sorry, I should clarify. My point is that even a candidate who would typically be a viable hire or interviewee is now struggling in the job market. The implication being that other STEM students, including CS students, are severely struggling to find jobs, right now.
My friends in earth sciences are essentially at 0% callback. Friends with identical experience to me from different schools are getting a <5-10% callback rate unless they have referrals.
I'm in 100% agreement with you and the other poster. There's no real silver bullet for quickly finding employment right now except the small niche of math/CS majors with good GPAs from T10 institutions applying to work in finance.
It's no joke in STEM either, I'll give you that. I should have said it's hard for humanities majors relative to STEM, because I definitely wouldn't try to claim it isn't a big difference for everyone, graduating in a recession vs a boom.
I read an article a while back about how it doesn't matter where you go to college provided you major in STEM. Here's a link, along with a counter point:
I wasn't super caught up in the debate, mainly because I think that as an absolute statement, the claim that it doesn't matter at all is nearly impossible to defend. It's really a relative argument. Read that way, though, I do find it compelling.
Another couple of problems here is that 1) there's always a bit of hand waving around "STEM", with a temptation to turn it into a no true scotsman argument. I defined STEM for this purpose as majors that require you to take specialized upper division coursework with a prerequisite 2 year undergraduate calculus through linear algebra and differential equations sequence. Even that's loose though, and may include some finance or highly quantitative Econ majors (I suspect they do just fine, though).
The other is that I think this may hide some differences between elite STEM majors in the nature of the work done. There's a big difference between "senior data scientist at uber cool prestige media company with tons of autonomy" and "senior CRUD bug fixer."
Drop the "humanities major"--it's true even for STEM majors as well. There's a pretty consistent career track from college to junior to senior positions, and if you fall off that track, it is quite hard to get back in again. There are very few majors for which demand is high enough to let you get back on the track, certainly not all of STEM.