Economics
It gets filed next to sociology and political science, and it pays like a business degree. Four years out the average economics graduate earns $82,686.
Written by the Sidequest team. Reviewed 2026-09-06.
Try the career before you pick the major
The clearest place this degree lands is the room where a company gets valued and the number gets argued over. Try five minutes of that before you commit four years to reaching it.
Northwind · what it is worth
A lowest and a highest number, for Harlan's meeting
- •Northwind: roasts its own coffee, runs its own cafes
- •sells about $210 million a year, still growing
- •nothing on the page yet, just the question
the blank page, before you start
Northwind is for sale. What do you look at to work out a fair price: what it sells, what it keeps after costs, or what other coffee companies sold for?
Try a day as an investment banker
A short, playful taste of the real work.
Finance, banking and consulting. A lot of them become investment bankers, who work out what a company is worth and help sell it.
Fifteen hours of lectures and about 30 hours of your own behind them. Nearly all of the 30 are problems with one right answer, and from third year a lot of them get worked in a spreadsheet with real data in it.
Where people end up
Finance, banking and consulting take most of them, and after that the money side of ordinary companies: working out what a thing is worth, what it will cost, and what happens to all of that if the price moves.
Two in five economics graduates hold a further degree by the middle of their career. Law is a common next one: on the law school entrance exam, economics majors score higher than any of the twenty biggest subjects.
Almost nobody becomes an economist. About 17,790 people in the country hold that title, and economics degrees turn out roughly twice that many people every single year.
What a week is like
You take four to six classes at once, which comes out to about 15 credit hours a semester. It is that same load every semester for four years: 120 credits, eight semesters, done.
About 15 of those hours are spent sitting in class. The other 30 are work you do on your own, two hours behind every hour you spend in a room. Call it 45 hours a week.
It is spread across seven days rather than stacked into five, so you can keep your evenings or you can keep your weekends, not usually both. What it does not leave is much slack in the weeks when two big things land on the same day.
A waking week is about 112 hours. This is the share of it the degree takes.
- In class15 hours
- Work on your own30 hours
- Yours67 hours
What those 45 hours are spent on.
with other people
Principles first, then the two courses the whole degree is built on: how one buyer and one seller land on a price, and how a country’s money and work move together. Each one assumes the maths you took the term before.
with other people
One statistics course early on, and then a third year course that teaches you to pull an answer out of real data and say how sure of it you are. Most of the later economics classes point at that one.
with other people
At a lot of universities economics sits inside the business school, and then you take the same set every business student takes: accounting, finance, management, marketing, and how goods get moved around. It is close to a third of the degree.
on your ownthe hard part
Graphs, algebra and short proofs, six or eight questions a class a week, each with an answer you either reach or do not. The two intermediate theory courses are where people find out whether they are staying.
on your own
From third year, a real pile of data in a spreadsheet or a stats program. You tidy it up, work out what pattern is in it, and write down plainly what that means.
on your own
A writing course, a science with a lab, an arts class and one more subject about people. You cannot get them all out of the way early, and one of them is still waiting in your very last term.
- Economics and business classes42%
- Maths and statistics19%
- Everything else you still have to take38%
- Classes you pick yourself0%
Most of the first year is writing, maths and general requirements. One class in it is economics, and you pick none of the rest.
How much do you make?
Economics is filed with the social sciences and paid like a business degree. It pays $82,686 four years out, against $63,293 for political science and $52,657 for sociology.
Right out of college
$82,686
Four years after finishing, the average economics graduate earns $82,686, and the figure counts people who went to work, not back in school.
Midway through
$115,000
Between 35 and 45, the average economics graduate earns $115,000.
At the height of it
$180,860
The best paid tenth of financial analysts earn $180,860.
Finance is the only degree on this site that pays more four years out, and it is ahead by $657. By 35 to 45 economics has gone past it. That is $115,000 against $112,000.
Where you study moves this number a lot. Graduates of the weakest economics programs earn $63,331 and graduates of the strongest earn $115,837, a gap of about $52,000 a year.
What each of these degrees pays four years after finishing.
- Finance$83,343
- Economics$82,686
- General business$68,257
- Political science$63,293
- Sociology$52,657
Political science and sociology are the subjects economics gets grouped with. Finance is the one it gets paid like.
The average money still owed on student loans
$20,775
The standard plan clears it in ten years.
Is this you?
The maths is real and it is smaller than the reputation. Two terms of calculus, one statistics course, and a third year course on pulling answers out of real data. The very heavy maths belongs to people who carry on to a doctorate, not to this degree. What catches people out instead is the gate. At some universities economics is a major you apply to rather than one you pick, and getting in means hitting a minimum grade average in the first economics courses, so your first year is being marked before you know whether you are in.
Tap any that sound like you.
This is probably you if
Probably not you if
What people who did it say
notahacker
Hacker News, September 2013
"I hated maths and wound up with an Economics major and a job where an above average grasp of stats is greatly beneficial. Go figure."
juillet, answering a student worried the maths would be too much
College Confidential, January 2015
"Most undergraduate economics majors don’t actually require that much math. They may require 1-2 semesters of calculus, perhaps linear algebra, perhaps differential equations."
laughfactory
Hacker News, November 2013
"I chose to finish my economics degree and find a job working for a bank. I can assure you that there are plenty of good jobs working for banks all across the country."
MSFT_Edging
Hacker News, January 2026
"There are very real people who major in economics in college and come in with their economic opinions they’d like to confirm, and just argue with the professors."
Questions people ask
- Is an economics degree worth it?
- The money says yes: $82,686 four years out against $20,775 of debt, which puts it ahead of every other social science by tens of thousands a year. The catch is the name, which tells an employer nothing: a third of economics graduates are in work this degree was never needed for.
- Do you have to be good at maths to major in economics?
- You need two terms of calculus and a statistics course, and then econometrics in third year. That is less maths than the subject’s reputation suggests. The heavy maths belongs to people going on to a doctorate.
- Is economics a hard major?
- The wall is the pair of intermediate theory courses in the middle of the degree, where the graphs turn into algebra and the marking gets exact. At some universities there is a second wall before that: a minimum grade average in the first courses just to be let into the major.
- Do economics majors become economists?
- Almost none of them, and the title needs a doctorate on top of the degree at most employers. Economics graduates go into finance, banking, consulting and the money side of ordinary companies instead.
- Should you study economics or finance?
- Finance is the narrower one and it pays $657 more four years out. Economics catches it by the middle of a career, $115,000 against $112,000, and it leaves more doors open, including law school. Finance leaves fewer graduates in work that did not need the degree.
Where these numbers come from
- What economics graduates earn four years out, how far programs vary, the loan debt, how many people finish, and what the neighbouring degrees pay: College Scorecard, field of study data, June 2026 release. Checked 2026-09-06.
- What share of each year is in the major, counted in credits: Arizona State University, published major map, 2024-2025. Checked 2026-09-06.
- How many years the standard loan plan runs: Code of Federal Regulations, title 34 section 685.208, the tiered standard repayment plan. Checked 2026-08-24.
- What one credit hour means in class time and work on your own: Code of Federal Regulations, title 34 section 600.2, the definition of a credit hour. Checked 2026-08-25.
- What economics graduates earn between the ages of 35 and 45, how many hold a further degree, and how many are in work that did not need the degree: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates. Checked 2026-09-06.
- The top tenth of pay for financial analysts, which this page’s height estimate is built from: Bureau of Labor Statistics, occupational employment and wage statistics, financial and investment analysts, May 2025. Checked 2026-09-06.
- How many people in the country hold the title of economist: Bureau of Labor Statistics, occupational employment and wage statistics, economists, May 2025. Checked 2026-09-06.
- Where economics majors place on the law school entrance exam: Michael L. Nieswiadomy, LSAT scores of economics majors, The Journal of Economic Education, volume 55 issue 4, 2024. Checked 2026-09-06.
- Universities that make students apply to the economics major with a grade average: Undark, In economics, grade restrictions weed out students of color, June 2022. Checked 2026-09-06.
- The required courses in an economics major, end to end: University of California, Berkeley, department of economics, major requirements. Checked 2026-09-06.
Careers this major feeds