A psychology major opens doors
Undergraduate psychology studies build skills valuable in the job market
Vol. 52 No. 5
Print version: Page 21
- The skills students develop in undergraduate psychology programs are valuable to employers across many sectors. Psychology majors hold jobs in 88 of a broad set of 129 U.S. occupational categories.1
- Students develop and hone many types of skills in psychology programs, including social, communication, and technological.2 Specifically, the skills most often possessed by psychology majors are customer service (57%), leadership (49%), Microsoft Office (49%), management (48%), and sales (41%).3
- Recognizing these skills and talking about them in language that employers understand is key to postgraduate success in the job market. Faculty who are aware of these skills can better advise their students about their full range of career options and how to market their skills to potential employers.4
Top 20 skills of psychology majors
Want more information? See CWS’s interactive data tools or contact CWS.
See the next Monitor on Psychology for the top workplace skills of graduates with advanced psychology degrees.
1 APA. (2021). Careers in Psychology [Interactive data tool]. https://www.apa.org/workforce/data-tools/careers-psychology. The data tool uses the National Survey of College Graduates, a nationally representative survey of U.S. bachelor’s degree holders conducted by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. An estimated 1.5 million psychology bachelor’s degree holders are in the U.S. workforce.
2 Naufel, K. Z., et al. (2018). The skillful psychology student: Prepared for success in the 21st century workplace. www.apa.org/education-career/guide/transferable-skills.pdfopens in new window
3 APA. (2021). Emsi skills database [Unpublished special analysis]. Emsi is a labor market analytics firm. Emsi’s proprietary skills database gathers information from resumes on job boards, digital profiles, websites, and other data sources. The database contained 145 million profiles, including 321,007 psychology bachelor’s degree holders. Data were extracted on August 4, 2020.
4 Vespia, K. M., et al. (2018). Faculty and career advising: Challenges, opportunities, and outcome assessment. Teaching of Psychology, 45(1), 24–31. DOI: 10.1177/0098628317744962