Career Finder Methodology

The Career Finder tool uses data from the US Census Bureau's most recently published American Community Survey (ACS) to report which careers people choose based on their educational backgrounds, and how much they earn in their respective fields. All data is reported for bachelor's degrees, and only program/career combinations with at least 10 respondents are initially considered. From that group, we further refine the results for each college major down to careers with a greater than average number of survey responses, to ensure the highest possible accuracy.

The annual salary for each reported career is not a static value, but instead reflects the average of the salaries reported by survey respondents with both the career and major indicated. This means, for instance, that there will be a substantial gap between the average annual salary indicated for Sales Supervisors as reported by a Humanities major versus an Economics major.

National annual earnings estimates, job growth projections, career descriptions, and entry-level education data are collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although salary data is reported for bachelor's degrees, all job listings on TalentDesk require different degree completion levels ranging from some high school experience to doctoral degrees.

Data Visualizations: The maximum salary on the bar charts is represented by three standard deviations from the average national salary, which will encompass, on average, 99.7% of the reported salaries.

For the Highest Earning Jobs section, only positions with a reported annual salary of over $35,000 are featured. For the Fastest Growing Jobs section, only job positions with projected growth rates of over 5% are featured.