What do humanities graduates do?

Julia Leng, careers adviser at the University of Aberdeen and Jenny Sloan, careers consultant at The University of Manchester take a look at outcomes for humanities graduates

In recent years the value of a humanities degree has become a contentious topic.1 However, research tells us that these subjects are crucial in tackling future challenges surrounding climate change, global health and artificial intelligence, among others.2 Humanities graduates gain a host of transferable skills that enable them to cultivate a unique understanding of cultures, people, ideas, morality and values.

Indeed, as computers behave more like humans, humanities subjects can teach critical, philosophical and ethics-based skills3 that will allow us to bridge the growing divide between human knowledge and human technical capability.4

Employment rates

This year's dataset shows us that the full-time employment rate for humanities graduates was 48.9%, lower than the average of 59% across all subjects. However, almost seven out of ten humanities graduates (69%) either agreed or strongly agreed that their current activity was on track with their future goals.

Slightly more humanities graduates were working in management roles (3.9%) than the average for all subjects (3.5%). There were also more graduates employed in clerical, secretarial, administrative (15.6%) and retail, waiting and other customer service (14.2%) roles. This is higher than the average of 8.7% and 8.4%, respectively, across all disciplines.

Those from English and philosophy disciplines had higher chances of securing graduate-level roles (66.9% and 66.4% respectively) compared to other humanities graduates. These figures were lower than the overall average for all subjects, which stands at 74.9%. Humanities graduates were also among the most likely to work in nongraduate level roles: 37.2% compared to the average across all subjects which was 25.1%.

Industries and salaries

Graduates of humanities worked across a range of industries with some disparity between subjects. History, philosophy and languages graduates were more than twice as likely to work in business, HR and finance than English and English literature graduates, who were more likely to be employed in education, arts, design, media or marketing, PR, sales. Almost four-fifths (79.2%) of humanities graduates agreed or strongly agreed that their current activity was meaningful.

Salaries among humanities graduates were slightly lower than the total average for graduates. The exception was male philosophy graduates who earned, on average, £29,788 without doing further study, compared to the all graduate average of £28,731. In fact, male graduates earned more than female across all subjects except in English literature, where female graduates with significant further study earned more.

Further study

Humanities graduates were more likely to pursue further study than graduates of other disciplines: 11.7% compared to the average of 6.7%. Of all humanities disciplines, history graduates were the most likely to be in further study (13.5%) and languages the least (9.9%).

58% of those in further education were studying for a Masters, higher than the 45.6% for all subjects. A total of 22.9% of humanities graduates pursued a postgraduate certificate or diploma (including PGCE/PGDE), higher than the 15.1% average for all subjects and an increase of 3% from last year.

This article was first published in the 2024/25 edition of What do graduates do?

Notes

1. Crackdown on rip-off university degrees, GOV.UK, 2023.
2. Qualified for the Future: Quantifying demand for arts, humanities and social science skills, The British Academy, 2020.
3. Why 'worthless' humanities degrees may set you up for life, BBC Worklife, 2019.
4. How the arts and humanities are crucial to responsible AI, UK Research and Innovation, 2023