Choosing a college major has always felt like a big life decision, influenced by not only personal inclinations and talents, but also by starting salaries— new engineering and computer science grads earn more than those with English degrees. But in today’s labor market, where hiring has slowed, artificial intelligence is reshaping some industries faster than others, and many once-booming job categories have cooled off, young people should be asking themselves an additional question: How many career paths can I take with my degree?

According to new LinkedIn data provided exclusively to Forbes , the key to young professionals successfully navigating today’s uneven job market may depend on whether their degree is versatile enough to land a job in several different industries. With overall hiring down 20% from pre-pandemic levels and 5% from last year, LinkedIn analyzed the 20 most common majors on their platform among recent bachelor degree graduates and looked at two factors: hiring conditions in the industries most traditionally related to a major and versatility to pivot to other industries.

The intriguing findings: Grads who majored in the social sciences and humanities are proving to be resilient in today’s job market because they gained skills that can be used across multiple industries. Meanwhile engineering graduates, who likely thought they’d picked a safe and lucrative major, not only face a weak hiring market, but also have more specialized skills that aren’t as versatile or as useful in as many industries. Overall, in today’s slow job market, LinkedIn found that versatility may be one of the biggest competitive advantages for new graduates.

Hireability vs. Versatility

To come up with the hireability and versatility of the top college majors, LinkedIn looked at U.S. students who completed bachelor’s degrees from 2022–2024 and were employed full-time in the May following their graduation year. The analysis ended with 2024 graduates to mitigate any bias from a lag in profile updates.

When looking at hireability, LinkedIn measured hiring conditions in April 2026 and compared it to December 2019, based on the hiring rate in the industries where each major’s graduates typically work. While overall hiring for entry-level jobs tied to the top majors is down from seven years ago, health majors seem to have the strongest hiring conditions likely due to an aging population and AI’s low impact in the industry. Last month, 35,000 jobs were added to the healthcare sector alone, making it one of the top three industries with the most job gains for the month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The month before, healthcare led the pack with 37,000 jobs added to the economy.

Engineering majors, on the other hand, face the weakest hiring conditions, with hiring down 25% from December 2019. This low hire rate, according to Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s Head of Economics, Americas, is because roughly 75% of engineering graduates typically go into manufacturing, professional services, construction and tech industries—many of which have seen a slow down in hiring. In fact, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas’ latest jobs cuts report , technology is the industry with the most job cuts this year, with 123,653 announced cuts. That’s up 66% from this same time last year, with AI being listed as the top reason why many tech companies have had layoffs.

When looking at versatility, which measures the share of graduates working outside of their major’s top two industries, LinkedIn found that engineering majors also have a hard time transitioning into other sectors, with just 41% of graduates working in fields outside of their major’s top two.

“Engineering is an area that is much more challenging today,” Kantenga said in regards to both its hiring and versatility conditions. And while healthcare is the sector with the lowest versatility rate of all the top majors, Kantenga points out that hiring is projected to remain so strong in healthcare, that graduates with this major don’t have to worry about looking for a job in another field.

Young professionals with social sciences and humanities degrees, Kantenga said, seem to be in a “sweet spot” in today’s labor market because even if they can’t find a job in their desired field, over 60% have been able to find work in other industries.

“If you look at the first couple of industries for them, it’s professional services, which is running slow, and financial services, which has also been running a bit slow although it's a bit steadier now,” said Kantenga. But, he added, in a low-hire market where the chance of finding a job in those traditional fields has been down, “more than half of social science majors are actually finding opportunities elsewhere.’’

He points to English majors as a specific example, where 69% have found jobs outside of their traditional industries. During a time when AI is automating ever more routine tasks, human skills that can’t be duplicated by tech, like communications and relationship-building, are increasingly important, he emphasized.

“When I was in college, it was always this running joke that English majors would be unemployed and it turns out that communication is actually an essential skill for so many jobs that a lot of folks do not have,” Kantenga said. “So at the moment, that major is really one where there's just a lot of versatility and there's enough versatility to where they can capture some of that hiring momentum coming from other industries.”

One of the most important things recent graduates looking for employment can do, Kantenga said, is research where opportunities are growing and where they are shrinking and then tailor their job search accordingly.

“Understand where there's momentum in the labor market and where there is not and be open to potentially considering other areas you may not have before,” he said. “For example, if you’re a software engineer and you want to go into tech, but tech hiring is about 20-30% slower than what we saw prior to the pandemic, maybe you should consider other areas that have momentum like healthcare or construction. They may not be hiring a massive volume of software engineers, but there are certainly opportunities there and other people may not be thinking about those industries.”

Additionally, he said, in a low-hire market where opportunities are uneven across sectors, tapping into your network and building solid relationships is key for opening doors and getting referrals.

“My mom always taught me it's not what you know, but who you know,” he said. “And that is important in a tough labor market.”

Beyond who you know, Kantenga said it’s critical that you also know how to showcase what you know. This includes listing out your skills on your profile, linking out to your portfolio, and actually showing the receipts for what you say you can do.

“It shouldn’t just be, ‘Yes, I can do this and yes, I can do that,’” he said. “[You need to] actually have demonstrables for what you’re capable of and then employers can check those out and then decide whether you’re a match or not, as opposed to having an employer kind of guessing in the dark.”

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