"Learn to Code" didn't end well...[ZeroHedge] Computer engineering grads face double the unemployment rate of art history majors, according to the most recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The stats show art history majors have a 3 percent unemployment rate while computer engineering grads have a 7.5 percent unemployment rate. Computer science grads are in a similar boat, with a 6.1 percent rate.
The trend appears notable among STEM majors.
Graphic design is at 7.2 percent, chemistry at 6.1 percent and fine arts at 7.1 percent. Physics and sociology — which represent both sides of the spectrum — came in with similar numbers, with 7.8 percent and 6.7, respectively.
The highest on the list is anthropology at 9.4 percent. The lowest is nutritional sciences at .4 percent.
But not all STEM fields are struggling, Asked to weigh in on the findings, economist Mark Perry, a University of Michigan Flint emeritus professor, told The Fix.
“All of the engineering fields except industrial engineering (at 4.6%) have jobless rates at 2.4% or lower (civil, aerospace, mechanical, engineering technologies, chemical, electrical, general, etc.),” Perry said via email. “Engineering graduates also have very high salaries and very low rates of underemployment (about 20%).”
Georgetown University’s Professor Nicole Smith, chief economist of the university’s Center on Education and the Workforce, said that although STEM majors appear to be in high demand in the employment sector, their skill sets developed as undergraduates are less marketable than graduates of liberal arts schools.
Liberal arts majors, such as art history, have a “wider pool…they can sort their talent from,” Smith said. She said liberal arts majors can have “several other occupations [and] industries” to sell their skills within, an advantage not often available to STEM majors.
Perry noted the bank’s 2025 data relied on information from 2023, and the next set of data to be released in 2026 might paint a different picture.
“Labor market conditions are dynamic and change constantly, so the high jobless rates for computer science majors in 2023 may change,” he said. 
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