The Top 10 Subjects for Postgraduate Employment

Postgraduate study is a chance to gain new skills and a valuable additional qualification. There's also evidence to suggest that people with a Masters do go on to earn more, on average, than those who only have Bachelors degrees.

But what about your immediate prospects as a fresh new postgraduate? Will having a Masters in your subject actually help you find work? We've taken a look at the top 10 subjects for postgraduate employment prospects: these are the Masters (and similar courses) with the highest proportion of graduates in full-time UK employment after six months.

Follow us for a step-by-step look at the top 10 subjects:

As a branch of scientific study, Social Science subjects are devoted to studying socieites and human relationships. This wide field includes subjects such as Sociology, Economics and Political Science. Currently, graduates are slightly more likely to find full-time employment than those working in Medicine, with 64% achieving this.

Engineering has been a growing field in recent years with the rapid social and technological changes taking place across the world. It is unsurprising that 65% of postgraduates find full-time employment within six months of graduation. A Further 17% also find themselves in some form of further study.

Agriculture also seems to offer fertile ground for postgraduate employment (sorry-not-sorry) with 65% of graduates finding work six months after they graduate.

This makes sense for such a clearly vocational field (Enough! - puns ed') and, sure enough, farming, forestry and fishing are all popular career options with a Masters degree in Agriculture. Opportunities are more diverse than you might think though, reflecting the contribution Agriculture graduates can make to current debates about climate change, environmental impact and ethics.

Similarly those working in the Natural Sciences has a slightly higher employment outcome, with 66% of graduates finding full-time work.

Natural Sciences in a broad field and many students may with to undertake a Mastes in Geography or Environmental Studies. These subjects have become especially important with the attention drawn to the climate crisis.

A Masters degree in Computer Science are likely to increase your employability as 66% of (post)graduates find full time work within six months.

Computer Science also has some fairly obvious applications, such as making it possible for me to write this blog, teleport it into the interweb-sky and have it beamed down into your device of choice.* Given the current focus on AI, machine learning and other really interesting things, it's no surprise that Computer Science postgrads seem pretty employable.

*This may not be accurate. I'd probably have a better idea how this internet stuff works if I had a Masters in Computer Science.

Is Business is pretty much the most professional Masters degree? I mean, it's literally the study of the things lots of people work in and for. Either way, 69% of Business postgrads are in business (or, at least, work full time) six months after they finish. This is good news for the most popular postgraduate subject.

High employability is probably no surprise here, given that this subject includes lots of prestigious MBA courses and that many students will be budding entrepreneurs. If you're one of them, it may be worth checking the many different types of Masters degree in Business available to you.

Unsurprisingly, a postgraduate degree in Law sets students up for professional employment. 69% of graduates find themselves in full-time employment, which is the same number as Business and Management graduates.

While you don't necessarily need a Masters degree in Law, qualifications such as the LLM can make you very attractive to law firms.

Another clearly professional subject area and another postgraduate study option with very good employment prospects – 72% of Masters graduates in full-time work after six months, in fact.

Many Masters-level students in this subject will be carrying on after their undergraduate course to gain RIBA Part 2 qualification, but separate Masters degrees in Architecture do exist. Career opportunities include the obvious (designing buildings. . . and building them) as well as other roles such as town and country planning or architectural conservation and heritage.

Your teacher presumably told you that education was a good thing. They were right. 73% of people with a postgraduate qualification in Education get a full-time job in the UK after six months. In fact, 98% of people are in work or further study in the UK or abroad, meaning that only 2% are unemployed. Now that's education.

This subject area includes a lot of highly vocational courses such as PGCEs and other teacher training qualifications, but more academic Masters degrees are also available. Career outcomes are kind of obvious, but education is still a diverse field, with teaching roles at all levels as well as opportunities to work in policy or charity roles.

We've used official Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data for the percentage of people with a taught postgraduate qualification (so, a Masters degree, Postgraduate Certificate, Postgraduate Diploma or similar) who find work in the UK after six months. This is based on HESA's most recent Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey.

See our guides to postgraduate employability for more information.

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